Preamble

The House—after the Adjournment on 14th September, 1956—met at half-past Two o'clock.

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Merchant Shipping (Flags of Convenience)

Mr. Peyton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware of the continuing unfair competition which the British shipowners have to meet from merchant shipping registered under flags of convenience; that it is estimated that the Cunard Line would have saved £14 million in taxation between 1949 and 1954 if their ships had been registered under such flags ; and if he will now give further consideration to taxation relief.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Harold Macmillan): lam well aware of this problem, and its complexities. Meanwhile, I have helped British shipping companies in the Finance Act by allowing them to retain investment allowances in respect of expenditure on new ships.

Mr. Peyton: While acknowledging all that my right hon. Friend has done, to which he has referred, does he not realise that this present crushing burden of taxation on shipping companies is such as is likely to cripple their competitive power, and, with it, to diminish the vastly important prestige of this industry?

Mr. Macmillan: As I have said, this is a very difficult problem, to which I am giving careful study.

Income Tax (Repayment Claims)

Mr. Tilney: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the average time taken before claims by individuals for repayments of Income Tax are met.

Mr. H. Macmillan: No statistics are kept, but the average is believed to be about two to three weeks for straightforward cases. Claims lodged during the busy period immediately following the end of the Income Tax year naturally take longer than those lodged at other times of the year.

Mr. Tilney: Is not my right hon. Friend aware that there are many cases which are not straightforward, and that, owing to the credit squeeze, many citizens are finding themselves hurt financially by this time-lag? Will he do his best to reduce the time-lag as much as possible?

Mr. Macmillan: Of course, and I am satisfied that the Inland Revenue officials do everything in their power to achieve this purpose.

Mr. Hobson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, as far as manual workers are concerned, this problem could be simplified by having 53 weeks in the code table, so that if a man got a rebate, having earned less than he would have done in the normal week, it would be known by the people in the office what amount they should repay the worker?

Mr. Macmillan: I remember a great row about "Give us back our 11 days," and I do not think I should like to make a 53-week year without notice.

Business Expenses (Hiring of Cars)

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware of the new arrangements proposed by certain companies for the hiring of cars to business firms; and how far the hiring charges involved will rank under the regulations as a 100 per cent. tax exemption charge in the calculation of Income Tax and Profits Tax.

Mr. H. Macmillan: The Control of Hiring (Vehicles) Order, 1956, came into operation on 1st October. Revenue expenditure incurred by traders on hiring cars for business purposes will, as hitherto, rank as an admissible deduction in computing trading profits for taxation purposes.

Mr. Wilson: Since the Chancellor is no doubt aware of the strong feeling on the subject of initial allowances—I think on both sides of the House—will he have


a very careful look at this before the next Budget, in order that he can satisfy himself whether these new proposals, as the sponsors claim, are a means of getting certain tax concessions which are not available on the basis of buying cars and using them for business purposes?

Mr. Macmillan: Of course I will look at it, but I should have thought they would have had rather the opposite effect.

Personal Incomes

Mr. McKay: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the balance of income left after Income Tax and Surtax to a single man, a married man, and a married man with two children on incomes of £180 in 1938, £314 in 1946, £359 in 1948, and £580 in 1955–56.

Mr. H. Macmillan: as the reply contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the Reply :


Year
Gross income
Net income after tax


Single Man
Married Man
Married man with two children



£
£
£
£


1938
180
176
180
180


1946
314
266
293
314


1948
359
313
334
359


1955
580
504
537
579

The figures in this table are on the assumption that the income is all earned and that the rates of tax are those applicable for 1938–39, 1946–47, 1948–49 and 1955–56, respectively.

Defence Departments (Expenditure)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent the Defence Departments have already overspent on their Estimates in the current financial year.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how current expenditure compares with the Estimates in respect of the Defence Departments.

Mr. H. Macmillan: There are indications that some Votes of the Defence Departments may be overspent by the end of the financial year, but it is too early to attempt a very accurate forecast.

Mr. Swingler: Does that mean that the Chancellor has no idea of what the bill will be for the Suez manoeuvres? Does it also mean that he has put no limit on the extra military spending which the Service Departments undertake?

Mr. Macmillan: No, Sir. Out of my natural courtesy, I answered the Question on what I thought it was intended to mean. If I had chosen to answer it precisely, the answer would have been that no Defence Department has already overspent its Estimates for the current year.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the Chancellor aware that whatever has been spent so far has only resulted in an awful muddle, including disgruntled reservists who seem to be on the verge of mutiny? Is it not the duty of the Treasury to ensure that some degree of administrative efficiency exists in all other Government Departments?

Mr. H. Wilson: Will the Chancellor say, out of his natural courtesy, whether we are to expect any Supplementary Estimates this autumn on the Defence Estimates, and will he further say whether any of the overspending at present going on has been met by virement between the Service Departments?

Mr. Macmillan: That is a rather complicated question, of which I should prefer to have notice. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there may have to be Supplementary Estimates sometimes because of the rules about the different Votes, but on the total result it is too early to tell.

Treasury Deposit Receipts

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will now reintroduce the system of Treasury deposit receipts.

Mr. H. Macmillan: No, Sir. I have, of course, examined this possibility, but I have decided against it.

Mr. Wilson: Without in any way endorsing what we consider to be the over-reliance of the Government on monetary methods, I would ask the Chancellor whether he is aware that, as is widely recognised in the City and in the great debate which has taken place in the financial journals recently, there is great concern about the operation of these financial controls, and does he not think that, in


relation to the liquidity argument, something should be done to sterilise some of the excess liquidity, perferably by Treasury deposit receipts?

Mr. Macmillan: I was asked the Question, and I have done my best to answer it. I do not think this method would be suitable. First of all, it was used during the very different conditions of war, and they are really very different from those of peace ; also, it is specially bound up with a period of deficit financing, and we have exactly the opposite now.

Tax Office, Dagenham

Mr. Parker: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what progress has been made with the opening of a separate tax office for Dagenham.

Mr. H. Macmillan: A separate office to serve the Dagenham area will be opened in a building in Ilford early next year. I am sorry that the location of a tax office in Dagenham itself is not likely to prove possible in the near future.

Dividends

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give an estimate of the extra amount per week each would receive if the total amount distributed annually in net ordinary dividends were distributed amongst the 23,989,000 total working population.

Mr. H. Macmillan: The total amount distributed as ordinary dividends by all companies in 1955 is estimated at £652 million before tax (excluding payments by one company to another). After deduction of Income Tax at the standard rate of 8s. 6d., this represents £375 million, or 6s. per head per week of the working population at June, 1956.

Mr. Osborne: Did I understand the figure to be 6d. or 6s.?

Mr. Macmillan: Six shillings.

Mr. Osborne: Would my right hon. Friend please send this Answer to his shadow so that his shadow may see that Sir Stafford Cripps was right—that there is not a lot to be gained by further redistribution?

Western Europe (Free Trade Area)

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on his discussions at the meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers, and elsewhere, on Her Majesty's Government's attitude to proposals for a free trade area in Western Europe.

Mr. H. Macmillan: My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and I took the opportunity of the presence of representatives of other Commonwealth countries in Washington in September for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank to discuss with them the possibility of the United Kingdom associating herself with other members of O.E.E.C. in a free trade area in order to establish a large-scale European market for manufactured goods.
Such an area would comprise the proposed Customs Union of the six Messina Powers and any other O.E.E.C. countries that wished to join. It would be a condition of the United Kingdom joining such an area that raw and manufactured foodstuffs, feedingstuffs, drink and tobacco would be excluded from the arrangements.
Her Majesty's Government will take their decision on these questions in the light of any views which other Commonwealth Governments may express, as well as the consultations which they are having with representatives of employers and employed at home. I hope to be able to make a statement soon.

Mr. Wilson: Since the Chancellor will, I am sure, understand that hon. Members on this side of the House, and, indeed, in all parts of the House, will want to give the most careful study to these proposals, which are of very great importance to the economic future of this country, will he agree to make more information available to the House, preferably in the form of a White Paper, including all the documents in relation to the Messina Powers' proposals and such information as he feels he can make available in relation to his discussions with the Commonwealth Ministers? I hope he will answer that point very clearly.
Secondly, would he give the House some idea of the timetable in this matter? Is it not the case that the Government intend to give instructions to their representatives to the O.E.E.C. meeting some time next month, and would he say when is the deadline for this information, and when he expects to be able to make a statement to the House?

Mr. Macmillan: Perhaps I might take the second part of the question first. The position is that a good deal of technical inquiry is going on between the various officials of O.E.E.C. as to the technical possibilities of such a plan—not as to whether it is desirable, but whether it is actually possible. There are problems about Customs, ports, and all the rest, which will take a considerable time to elucidate.
Then as to the question of policy, it will be necessary for Her Majesty's Government to give some instructions in the reasonably near future—I have said probably in the course of next month—to our representatives, for it would be not, I think, honest on our part if we did not give some preliminary instructions, at least for further elucidation. That we shall try to do.
With regard to the publishing of a White Paper, I will certainly bear that in mind. I do not think this moment would be quite the right moment; I should like to be able to add a little more to it. I hope that something might be publishable before the period of any large-scale debate which might well take place in the middle of next month.

Air Commodore Harvey: I was not clear what my right hon. Friend said in his last sentence, but would he bear in mind the desirability of representing to the Leader of the House that we have the debate in this House at a reasonably early date?

Mr. Macmillan: Yes, certainly; but I think at this time of year the timetable actually makes that fairly convenient.

Cider and Perry (Duty Receipts)

Mr. Godman Irvine: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what sum has been collected in the first six months in duty on cider and perry over 15 degrees proof under Section 2 of the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1956.

Mr. H. Macmillan: I regret that this information is not available. Duty paid on strengthened ciders and perries, which are charged with duty as British wine, is aggregated with other receipts of that duty and separate figures are not maintained.

Mr. Bottomley: Is the Chancellor aware that, as was warned on both sides of the House, the effect of this duty is harming this very important cider industry in this country?

Mr. Macmillan: I have no evidence of that, but, of course, I will watch it carefully.

Wages, Salaries and Undistributed Profits

Mr. McKay: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the total for wages and salaries paid by the companies and public corporations trading in the United Kingdom for the year 1955 ; what was the undistributed income, after taxation, of such companies and public corporations for the same year ; and what percentage is this sum of the total wages and salaries paid by them.

Mr. H. Macmillan: Total wages and salaries paid by companies and public corporations in 1955 are estimated at approximately £7,150 million and their undistributed profits after tax at £1,655 million. The latter figure is 23 per cent. of the former. It is worth noticing that the £1,655 million of undistributed profits was more than offset by the amount spent by these concerns on investment.

Industrial Taxation and Social Services

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much was paid by industry in taxation for each of the last five years ; and what were the social services it paid for.

Mr. H. Macmillan: As the Answer contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Osborne: If industry ceases to make profits over the next five years, what alternative source of taxation has my right hon. Friend in mind to maintain the welfare services?

Mr. Macmillan: If industry ceased to make profits, it would be a very bad day for this country.

Following is the Answer :
The total payments of taxes on income by companies and public corporations (excluding Income Tax deducted at source on payments of interest and dividends) in each of the last five years, as shown in Table 43 of the National Income Blue Book, 1956. is estimated as follows :



£ million


1951
707


1952
960


1953
962


1954
872


1955
912

The total expenditure by the Central Government on social services defined as in Table 42 of the National Income Blue Book, 1956, is estimated as follows :



£ million


1951
1,187


1952
1,216


1953
1,298


1954
1,336


1955
1,428

Expenditure by the Central Government includes specific grants to local authorities in respect of the services concerned. It includes grants from the Central Government to the National Insurance Funds but excludes expenditure by the National Insurance Funds.

This answer does not, of course, imply that the taxes paid by industry are specifically applied to expenditure on social services.

Members' Salaries

Mr. Lewis: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, now that the cost-of-living figure has been stabilised and the country has overcome its economic difficulties, he will increase the salaries of Members of Parliament to compensate them for the rise in the cost of living during the past few years.

Mr. H. Macmillan: I am naturally grateful for the hon. Gentleman's generous praise of the Government's economic performance. But, while we have achieved for the present a steady Retail Price Index, I would not claim more than that the country is in process of overcoming its economic difficulties. For the reasons which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave to the House on 12th July, it would be an error of judgment for the Government to prejudice that process by moving to increase the salaries of hon. Members now.

Mr. Lewis: Whilst, naturally, expecting the Chancellor of the Exchequer to disagree with his right hon. Friend the

Leader of the House, I would ask him whether he is not aware that at Llandudno the Leader of the House said that all the Election promises had now been fulfilled, and one of those was that the cost of living would be reduced and the £ sterling would again be worth something ; and if, in fact, the Leader of the House is right, surely, then, should not the Chancellor of the Exchequer implement this promise which he gave, namely, that when the cost of living was stable he would deal with the admitted grievance of M.Ps., or is this another promise which is going to be broken?

Mr. Macmillan: I think the hon. Member is rather complicating an issue which he made particularly simple in the form of his Question.

International Bank (Indian Negotiations)

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what action the British representative on the Board of the World Bank has taken in relation to the negotiations between the President and the Indian Government regarding India's second five-year plan.

Mr. H. Macmillan: None, Sir. The Indian Government is in direct negotiation with the Management of the International Bank in this matter. No report on the negotiations has yet been made to the Executive Board of the Bank.

Mr. Brockway: In view of the implications of these negotiations, particularly in the letter which Mr. Eugene Black, the President of the Bank, sent to the Indian Government on 5th September, will Her Majesty's Government indicate that we are opposed to any political strings being attached to the aid given by this Bank?

Mr. Macmillan: The measure of the good will of the International Bank towards the Government of India lies in the fact that over the past seven years it has approved loans to India worth over 200 million dollars. There is no country, I think—except, perhaps, one—that has borrowed as much from the Bank during that period. The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that when this matter comes to the Board from the Executive, the British representative will play a sympathetic rôle.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer bear in mind that it is important for this country, as the head of the Commonwealth, in which in the near future countries will attain their independence, that we should dissociate ourselves from the statement in which political strings are attached to economic aid?

Mr. Macmillan: Yes, but it would be quite inappropriate in the case of this Bank, which is managed by the Executive, for me to instruct our director to take any line until the proper moment. The last people who would wish us to do so would be the Government of India.

Mr. Griffiths: Do I gather that at the proper moment the Government will make the view of this country clear?

Mr. Macmillan: This Bank is run on business lines—

Mr. Stokes: Not like the Government.

Mr. Macmillan: —but like the excellent capitalist business of the right hon. Gentleman opposite—and the management is now in the hands of Mr. Black and his advisers. When the matter comes to the Board, that is the moment when we shall properly state our position.

Commonwealth and Colonial Publications (Sale)

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary to the Treasury what publications of other Commonwealth and of Colonial Governments are supplied by Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): Apart from Annual Reports of the Colonial Governments and occasionally other publications of wide general interest, the Stationery Office does not sell the publications of other Commonwealth and of Colonial Governments.
All Colonial Government publications are sold in this country by the Crown Agents. Commonwealth Government publications are available from the respective High Commissioners' Offices in London.

Small Income Groups

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper :

Dame IRENE WARD: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, before his next Budget, he will hold a comprehensive review as to what can be done to help the small fixed income groups to meet the high cost of living.

Dame Irene Ward: On a point of order. May I not have an answer to my Question?

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry, I am afraid I omitted to call the hon. Lady. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman has left the House. I will see if I can get an answer.

Mr. H. Macmillan: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will answer this Question—I understand, rather out of its order. As I have indicated on several occasions, I am very conscious of the difficulties facing many such people and we have introduced a number of specific measures to help them. I will, of course, continue to study this problem, and am very ready to consider any concrete proposals which the hon. Lady may make.

Dame Irene Ward: In view of the fact that my right hon. Friend is not now in purdah for the Budget and it is possible to put down a Question early, may I ask whether, after the statements made by the Government leaders at Llandudno, I may expect a comprehensive review? I am not asking for decisions but am asking my right hon. Friend to give an assurance that there will be a comprehensive review. He has already had dozens of suggestions from me, and I will give him dozens more if he would like them.

Mr. Macmillan: Yes, of course, we shall review this, together with other questions. It is just because at the moment neither I nor the hon. Lady are in purdah that I look forward to having further discussions.

Dr. King: Is the Chancellor aware that some people who retired during the war or thereabouts on a pension which seemed to guarantee them honourable security in old age now find that pension about one-third of its value,


and that these are the real victims of the rise in the cost of living? Will the right hon. Gentleman not do something about this special case?

Mr. Macmillan: As I say, a good deal has been done, and, of course, it would be gratifying if we could do more : that must depend partly on the proposals which I shall make in next year's Budget.

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Community Hall, Welwyn

Mr. Viant: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government if he is aware that a brewers' trust has offered to the Welwyn and Hatfield Development Corporation to provide a community hall as part of a block with a public house, the Corporation, on account of the credit squeeze, having been unable to build a community centre ; and whether he will refuse his approval of this project as long as the Government's present credit policy is in operation.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. Enoch Powell): My right hon. Friend sees no reason for interposing to prevent this project.

Mr. Viant: Does this not indicate a departure from the general credit policy laid down by the Government?

Mr. Powell: No, not at all.

Reorganisation

Wing Commander Bullus: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government what has been the general response of the authorities concerned to his White Paper on Local Government Reorganisation ; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Duncan Sandys): Very few councils have as yet expressed opinions on the proposals in the White Paper. However, I expect to receive their views in due course through the local authority associations.

Mr. Wade: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he will make a statement on the reorganisation of local government finance with particular reference to the rate burden falling upon occupiers of shops and offices and other premises to which industrial derating does not apply.

Mr. Sandys: Yes, Sir ; as soon as possible.

Mr. Wade: May I understand from the Minister whether, pending a decision on the wider, complicated subject of local government reorganisation, any remedy will be introduced to alleviate the hardship of shopkeepers and others who are adversely affected by the present assessments and do not benefit from derating?

Mr. Sandys: That would, of course, involve legislation.

Christ Church Meadows, Oxford (Road Tunnel)

Mr. A. J. Irvine: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government what estimate he has received of the cost of a tunnel under the proposed road through Christ Church Meadows, Oxford.

Mr. Sandys: I am advised that the capital cost of such a tunnel would be upwards of £7 million. Ventilation and pumping might cost about £100,000 a year.

Mr. Irvine: Why has not the right hon. Gentleman available for the House a firmer estimate than that of a method which will avoid the proposed appalling damage to Oxford? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that estimates have been made of a figure under £2 million, which have not been entirely guesswork, but which have been based upon careful preliminary investigation which has taken into account the character of the soil and other relevant factors?

Mr. Sandys: I am assured that the latest technical information has been taken into account in arriving at the estimate which I have given, but I shall be very happy to arrange for the hon. Gentleman's figure to be checked by the experts.

Sir R. Boothby: Will my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that he will countenance no prodigal expenditure on tunnels in Oxford, and stick to his present proposals, which are by far the best?

Westminster Abbey (Bookstall)

Mr. A. J. Irvine: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government why, having regard to the national importance of the site, no directive was issued re quiring planning applications affecting


Westminster Abbey to be referred to him, thereby ensuring that the proposal for the erection of the Abbey bookstall came to him for decision.

Mr. Sandys: It was thought that this was a question which could properly be left to the Dean and Chapter and the London County Council.

Mr. Irvine: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the unsightly bookstall which has been constructed, very regrettably with the approval and the sponsorship of the Abbey authorities? With that in mind and in view, will he reconsider the question whether he has sufficient powers to protect buildings of national importance?

Mr. Sandys: I explained the circumstances in which this application was not called in. I know many people have expressed the view, which I personally share, that shop windows are out of place at the entrance to the Abbey, and I have no doubt that the Dean and Chapter will take into account the views which have been expressed. I am afraid I have no further power in the matter, the decision having been taken by the local planning authority.

Roman Wall Remains, London (Preservation)

Captain Pilkington: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government to what extent those parts of London Wall, excavated since the war, are to be preserved in the rebuilding of the City.

Mr. Sandys: In accordance with the London Development Plan the principal remains of the Roman Wall now exposed are to be preserved in open settings.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING

Building Programmes

Mr. C. Hughes: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government details of the local authorities in England and Wales respectively, which have resolved not to build any further houses or flats for general needs.

Mr. MacColl: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government how many of the housing programmes submitted to him by local authorities indicate

an intention to cut down building for general need.

Mr. Sandys: In a circular sent out in July, I asked housing authorities to let me know the number of tenders they proposed to let in the current financial year. I am still awaiting replies from a third of these authorities. I will publish the figures as soon as the returns are complete.

Mr. Hughes: Is the Minister aware that a serious situation is arising because many little authorities have resolved not to continue building houses for the general need? Is he further aware that many more local authorities will cease to build houses for general need when the £10 subsidy is done away with and that thus many thousands of people will be deprived of the hope of homes? Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that his entire attitude towards housing is antisocial and harsh?

Mr. Sandys: It is the Government's deliberate policy to encourage local authorities to give higher priority to slum clearance, and that policy is succeeding.

Elderly Persons

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government if he will now make a statement on the housing of the elderly arising from the recent inquiry.

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government what steps he is taking to increase the provision of old people's bungalows.

Mr. Sandys: About 1,300 local authorities and several important voluntary organisations, have given me information about the accommodation which they are providing for elderly persons. In addition, officials of my Department, and of the Ministry of Health, have visited and reported upon 25 selected housing schemes of different kinds. I have also discussed this whole problem with the Central Housing Advisory Committee.
Local authorities must, of course, decide for themselves what proportion of their house-building effort should be devoted to each section of their population. However, as a result of the inquiry, I have decided to draw their attention to the importance of catering for the special


requirements of elderly persons. A circular embodying a number of specific suggestions is being prepared and will be issued shortly.

Dame Irene Ward: While thanking my right hon. Friend very warmly for the inquiry he has carried out and the decision he has taken, may I ask, in view of the fact that local authorities always assert that finance is part of their difficulty in building for the elderly, whether before producing his rent control policy my right hon. Friend will take steps to ensure that local authorities have the finance to enable them to build for elderly people, thus helping the release of houses? What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to deal with the financial situation which, I am sure, was disclosed in the discussions with local authorities?

Mr. Sandys: The question of rent control does not, of course, affect council houses. We discussed the question of the housing subsidy and my hon. Friend put forward various suggestions, which were debated fully, during the passage of the Housing Subsidies Bill earlier in the year.

Mr. Brockway: Whilst appreciating the sentiment that the right hon. Gentleman has expressed, both today and when this matter was last discussed, may I ask how it is possible for local authorities, under present financial conditions, to extend the building of bungalows for the aged? Is it not the case that the higher interest rates are making it impossible to carry out this building and, in some cases, are causing local authorities to increase the rents of the aged? Will the right hon. Gentleman therefore consider making a grant for this purpose?

Mr. Sandys: There are certain suggestions regarding the provision of bungalows for elderly people in the circular which I am in process of preparing.

Mr. Mitchison: Will the right hon. Gentleman now withdraw the cut he made in the housing subsidies in these cases?

Mr. Sandys: That is not at present in contemplation.

Slum Clearance

Wing Commander Bullus: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government if he will make a statement as to the progress of slum clearance in England and Wales.

Mr. Sandys: During the first half of this year, some 17,000 slum dwellings were demolished or closed, and about 46,000 people were rehoused. This is an increase of about 50 per cent. over the figures for the corresponding period of last year. During the first nine months of this year local authorities have designated clearance areas involving over 33,000 houses and over 100,000 people, which is double the rate for last year. All these figures show that the slum clearance drive is steadily gathering momentum.

Wing Commander Bullus: While thanking my right hon. Friend for those most encouraging figures, may I ask him whether they do not indicate that his decision to give a higher subsidy was a correct one and that that policy is paying?

Mr. J. Silverman: If the Minister is so anxious to promote slum clearance, why is it that the Ministry has refused to confirm four orders made under the slum clearance legislation by Birmingham Corporation?

Mr. Sandys: I cannot answer questions about individual slum clearance orders. All I can say is that we are confirming orders at an ever accelerating rate.

Mr. Mitchison: Are not the figures now given by the right hon. Gentleman rather less than what the local authorities proposed to do before the Government embarked on what they called their slum clearance programme?

Mr. Sandys: Whatever the local authorities may have said they were going to do, it was the result of being asked by the Government to make a review of their slum clearance problems and to draw up programmes.

Rent Control (Legislation)

Mr. Allaun: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government (1) by how much he proposes to permit an increase in restricted rents ;
(2) what steps he intends to take to ensure that increases in restricted rents are spent on repairing or improving the houses concerned before amending the Rent Restriction Acts to permit such increases.

Mr. Sandys: A year ago I informed the House that the Government had decided to review the provisions of the Rent Acts. This review is now completed, and we have come to the conclusion that, subject to necessary safeguards, rent control should be progressively abolished. Our detailed proposals will be submitted to Parliament in due course.

Mr. Allaun: Is the Minister aware that, since his Llandudno speech and up to this morning, the shares of eight leading housing property companies have risen by £2,400,000 in anticipation of higher rents and higher dividends, and does the Minister admit that the present tragic housing shortage is bound to be exploited by very many landlords if he makes them this unconditional gift of unrestricted rents?

Mr. Sandys: I do not follow the movement of these shares as closely as the hon. Member. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] We shall, no doubt, have plenty of opportunities of discussing all these matters together before very long.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL SERVICE

Science Graduates

Mr. Mikardo: asked the Minister of Labour what action he has taken in connection with the recommendation of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy concerning the deferment of National Service for science graduates.

The Minister of Labour and National Service (Mr. Iain Macleod): I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the Council's recommendation in its Eighth Annual Report that science graduates who take up school teaching should have their National Service deferred. Since the beginning of this year graduates with first or second class honours in mathematics or science who teach in a secondary school, in which advanced or senior secondary courses are provided, have been granted indefinite deferment of National Service.

Mr. Mikardo: Whilst thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that information, may I ask whether he ought not to consider the extension of this arrangement to science graduates engaged on research

as well as those engaged on certain types of teaching?

Mr. Macleod: This is a useful beginning and, under this arrangement, 200 have been deferred this year. It is quite true, as the hon. Member indicates, that there are a number of linked proposals, some of which are in front of me now.

Oral Answers to Questions — EMPLOYMENT

Manufacturing Industries (Earnings)

Major Beamish: asked the Minister of Labour if he will publish a table showing the average weekly earnings of adult male workers in manufacturing industries during the last week of April, 1952, and the same week in subsequent years ; and how this figure has increased as a percentage, counting the first year as 100, in comparison with the percentage rise in the cost of living since the same time.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Yes, Sir. I will, if I may, include the table in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the table :
The following table shows the average weekly earnings of adult male wage-earners in the manufacturing industries in the last pay week in April in each year from 1952 to 1956, together with the percentage increase in each year compared with April, 1952, and the percentage increase shown by the Retail Prices Index over the same periods.

—
Average Weekly Earnings
Percentage increase in earnings since April, 1952
Percentage increase in Retail Prices Index over the same periods



s.
d.




April, 1952
179
4
—
—


April, 1953
191
11
7
4


April, 1954
205
2
14
5


April, 1955
224
7
25
8


April, 1956
242
2
35
16

Coventry

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction among unemployed workers in Coventry concerning the notification


of vacancies in the city; and if, therefore, he will consider reintroducing the Notification of Vacancies Order.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I understand that the dissatisfaction to which the hon. Member refers is caused by the belief that available jobs are filled without notification of a vacancy to the employment exchange and that employers give preference to workers who are known to them. The reintroduction of the Order would not prevent employers nominating workers nor interfere with the employer's right to determine whom he will engage. I see no justification for reintroducing the Order.

Miss Burton: Will the right hon. Gentleman look at another angle of the matter? Is he aware that there is considerable dissatisfaction in Coventry about the existence, of private employment agencies? Is he aware that workers who go to these agencies have to pay a fee and a certain proportion of their first week's wages if they get the job? From the point of view of psychological benefit to the workers in Coventry, will the right hon. Gentleman consider looking at the matter and trying to find out why particular jobs which should go to the local employment exchanges are going to these private employment agencies?

Mr. Macleod: The reintroduction of the Notification of Vacancies Order, which the hon. Lady puts forward as a solution, would do very little to meet the problem which she has in mind. The question of fee-charging agencies is under consideration by the Government in the light of the international convention on that subject.

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that in Coventry men and women applying for jobs are told by some employers that there is an upper age limit of 45 for men and 35 for women ; that such an attitude causes anxiety among those looking for work ; and if he will make a statement outlining the policy of his Department on this matter.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Robert Carr): I am informed that for a time the General Post Office in Coventry who had a great number of

applications gave preference to men under 45, but they are once more recruiting up to the age of 60. I know of no other instances of such age limits for men, but I understand that for certain types of vacancies for women there are some employers who specify an upper age limit. I can assure the hon. Member that it is the policy of my Department to encourage employers to consider the most suitable applicants regardless of their age.

Miss Burton: I am glad to have that information about the Post Office, but does the hon. Gentleman realise that when I was in Coventry ten days ago I checked up on this matter and I was told that there was a definite age limit of 45 years? Would the hon. Gentleman give what publicity he can to this matter as far as it affects both men and women?

Mr. Carr: I understand that the Post Office has now removed that limit. It was purely temporary, and I think that the Question and Answer will give it the necessary publicity.

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that some of the vacancies in Coventry could be filled by those out of work if some re-training were possible ; and if he will investigate, as a matter of urgency, the possibility of such courses being provided by the Government.

Mr. Carr: It is accepted by both sides of industry that any training that may be required for unskilled or semi-skilled work is best given by the employer concerned. In suitable cases training can be given in Government training centres for certain types of skilled work.

Miss Burton: But that takes so long. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a good many women who are out of work in Coventry today have told me that there are jobs in factories which they could fill if they had a little more additional training? If that is not being given, will the hon. Gentleman look at the matter, because it is really urgent?

Mr. Carr: We are keeping this matter under review, but Government training centres, by their very nature, must be confined to skilled workers because in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations it is very often essential that the training should be given on the job.

Oral Answers to Questions — COST OF LIVING

Retail Prices Index

Mr. Hamilton: asked the Minister of Labour what is the estimated total effect on the Retail Prices Index of the recent increases in the prices of bread and milk.

Mr. Iain Macleod: The increase of ½d. a pint in the price of milk on 1st July was the equivalent of about one-fifth of a point in the Retail Prices Index, but there was in fact no rise in the Index figure for July because this increase was more than counterbalanced by price decreases for other items. Full information has not yet been collected regarding the increased prices for bread, but it seems likely that in the absence of other price changes these increases would raise the Index by about one-half of a point.

Mr. Hamilton: Whilst these increases might seem negligible to the right hon. Gentleman, is he aware that they are not negligible to families, particularly where there are a number of children? Is this what the Government call their contribution to the policy of stability for which they are working? How can the Government expect workers to co-operate in that respect when they, by their deliberate policy, are forcing up the prices of necessities?

Mr. Macleod: As to the question of stability, the Index stands at a lower figure than it did when the Chancellor made his much derided "plateau" speech six or seven months ago. The Index shows this year an increase of two points, but as it is the first day of term, I will spare the hon. Member the usual comparison with 1951.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Herring Industry Board (Rejection Scheme)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is yet in a position to make a statement on the problems arising from the termination on 30th April of the rejection scheme of the Herring Industry Board ; and if he will indicate his present plans in this matter.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. James Stuart): A new rule, with the same effect in regard to rejection as the pre-

vious one, came into operation on the 1st May. The second part of the Question does not, therefore, arise.

Mr. Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware of the recent statement by the Chairman of the Herring Industry Board expressing the need to work out some system whereby fair shares would be accorded to a large section of the industry? What is he doing about that?

Mr. Stuart: That is another question. I have no doubt that the Herring Industry Board will do its best in all these matters.

Health Visitors (Reports)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has yet considered the recent Report of the Working Party on Health Visitors; and if he will state the policy of the Government in relation to the recommendations in that Report, particularly those recommending an immediate review of salary scales.

Mr. J. Stuart: All the recommendations in the Report will be considered carefully in consultation with the local authorities and the other interests concerned.

Mr. Hughes: Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that this is an important matter? Does he realise that health visitors have to pass more examinations than have nurses and are paid smaller salaries? Does he realise that there is an urgent grievance awaiting urgent treatment? What is the right hon. Gentleman doing about it?

Mr. Stuart: I agree that it is important, but this is a long and very detailed Report, and it takes time to consider it. As to the salaries, the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council will no doubt have to be consulted.

Poliomyelitis

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a comprehensive statement on the incidence in Scotland of poliomyelitis, indicating age groups and areas, and on the results which have followed the tests


and application of the new anti-poliomyelitis vaccine recommended by the Department of Health for Scotland, to the latest convenient date.

Mr. J. Stuart: In the four weeks to 13th October, 1956, there were 57 provisional notifications of poliomyelitis, of which I will circulate details in the OFFICIAL REPORT. About 34,000 children were vaccinated during May and June last, but it is too early to assess the results of these vaccinations. A detailed

POLIOMYELITIS—SCOTLAND


Provisional Notifications—4 weeks to 13th October, 1956


Area
Age Groups


All Ages
Under 1
1–4
5–14
15–24
25–34
35–


1956









Lanark County
11
—
—
7
1
2
1


Glasgow Burgh
5
—
1
3
1
—
—


Edinburgh Burgh
5
—
3
1
1
—
—


Ross and Cromarty County.
5
—
1
1
—
1
2


Fife County
3
—
1
1
—
1
—


Ayr County
2
—
—
1
—
1
—


Dumfries County
2
—
1
—
1
—
—


Midlothian
2
—
—
—
—
—
2


Moray and Nairn
2
—
1
—
1
—
—


Perth and Kinross
2
—
—
2
—
—
—


Wigtown County
2
—
—
2
—
—
—


Aberdeen Burgh
2
1
—
1
—
—
—


Coatbridge Burgh
2
—
1
1
—
—
—


Dumbarton Burgh
2
—
—
1
1
—
—


Dunfermline Burgh
1
—
—
1
—
—



Motherwell and Wishaw Burgh.
1
—
—
1
—
—



Perth Burgh
1
—
—
1
—
—
—


Aberdeen County
1
—
1
—
—
—
—


Argyll County
1
—
—
1
—
—
—


Dunbarton County
1
—
—
—
—
1
—


East Lothian
1
—
—
—
1
—
—


Inverness County
1
—
1
—
—
—
—


Stirling County
1
—
1
—
—
—
—


Zetland
1
—
—
1
—
—
—


TOTALS
57
1
12
26
7
6
5

Home Accidents

Captain Duncan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many local authorities in Scotland have set up home safety committees.

Mr. J. Stuart: I understand that there are four local home safety committees in Scotland, with which the local authorities are associated; and that many of the local accident prevention committees set up by other Scottish local authorities are concerning themselves increasingly with home accidents.

assessment is being made by the Medical Research Council, and the results will be made known in due course.

Mr. Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to give an assurance that results indicated are due to this particular vaccine and not to some other cause?

Mr. Stuart: As I said, it is too early to assess results, but that will be done.

Following are the details :

Captain Duncan: Will my right hon. Friend do his best to encourage local authorities to pay more attention to home safety?

Mr. Stuart: Yes, Sir, I will.

Captain Duncan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland in how many areas in Scotland has the help of the local fire brigades been enlisted to make known the dangers from fire in the home to school children.

Mr. J. Stuart: In two, Lanarkshire and Aberdeen City.

Captain Duncan: Will my right hon. Friend encourage other local authorities to take more interest in the matter?

Mr. Stuart: I have no objection whatsoever, but it is for education authorities to decide whether to invite the help of fire masters, and it is for the fire authorities to decide whether they can render the type of help needed.

Mrs. Mann: Is there any reason why the "Mind that Child" propaganda as applied to road accidents cannot be linked with deaths in the home?

Mr. Stuart: I personally agree with the hon. Lady. Advice on this subject is being issued.

Mr. Woodburn: Would the right hon. Gentleman pay tribute to those teachers who are doing a tremendous lot in this respect and not leave the impression that nothing is being done? Splendid work is being done by the school teachers.

Mr. Stuart: I willingly do that, but as a matter of fact I was endeavouring to answer the Question on the Order Paper.

Oral Answers to Questions — SUEZ CANAL

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the dispute with the Egyptian Government regarding the Suez Canal.

The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden): I would ask the hon. Gentleman to await the statement which my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary is making at the end of Questions.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMED FORCES (RESERVISTS)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Prime Minister why he considered it necessary to request all Departments concerned to draw the attention of reservists recalled to the Armed Forces to their entitlement to National Service grants on certain conditions ; and what action has been taken on his request.

Mr. Dodds: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement in respect of improvements that have

resulted from his instruction to speed up the payment of Service grants to needy families.

The Prime Minister: It was because of reports that some reservists' families might not have received National Service grants that I arranged for an examination of the procedure to be made. As a result, I am satisfied that the Departments concerned are dealing with these applications expeditiously. As an example of one administrative improvement which we have made, we have arranged for provisional grants in cases in which the exact amount of the grant is likely to take time to establish.

Mr. Swingler: In view of the shocking pay muddle which occurred in many cases, as well as the failure to provide useful employment for many reservists, is the Prime Minister aware that many reservists and their families are very grateful to him for his intervention? But was this not a grave reflection on the administration of the Service Departments, and is it not a curious thing, to say the least, that the head of the Department principally responsible for the confusion should now be selected for promotion to preside over all the Services?

The Prime Minister: We have had about 5,000 applications—[Laughter]—for reservist pay. Out of those 5,000 applications, just under 300 were outstanding at the beginning of this week. Of the 300 applications, roughly half reached the Ministry within the last three days.

Mr. Dodds: But could the right hon. Gentleman explain why much earlier careful preparations were not made to avoid undue hardships to the families of recalled reservists, and does he not appreciate that this aspect and other aspects of the recall of reservists reveal the worst series of bureaucratic blunders of modern times, with insult added to injury by the promotion of the Minister who bears a heavy responsibility for what took place?

The Prime Minister: I do not think that is either fair or just. These are administrative arrangements which have been in existence for at least eight years and have been employed before. It was because I wanted to satisfy myself that they were working rapidly that I made this inquiry. I think the results—out of 5,000


applications only 300 not yet dealt with and, of those, 150 only three days old—show that the machinery is working.

Dame Irene Ward: As an old member of the War Service Grants Committee and with some knowledge of the machinery, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he thinks that the present scale is adequate to meet the need of older reservists, having regard to the fact that the present machine really operates in respect of people called up for National Service? It is an important issue.

The Prime Minister: I agree that it is a very important issue, and perhaps my hon. Friend would put down a Question, because I should prefer to give a detailed answer rather than a supplementary one.

Mr. Lewis: asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware of the concern felt by the public at the recent events connected with the recall of reservists and other matters concerning the actions taken by the Government during the recent Suez Canal crisis; and whether he will move to appoint a Select Committee to examine all matters pertaining to the Government's action during this period.

The Prime Minister: My previous answer indicates that I had been aware of the problems concerning reservists and that action has been and is being taken. The reply to the second part of the Question is "No, Sir."

Mr. Lewis: In view of the fact that the Prime Minister himself knows that there was difficulty at the commencement, because he said so—[HON. MEMBERS : "No."] Well, the right hon. Gentleman said that he gave further instructions to have the matter looked at and, arising from that, improvements were made; in view of that, and the fact that hon. Members on both sides of the House have been receiving letters of complaint from their constituents—[HON. MEMBERS : "No."] Well then, only Labour Members have been receiving letters of complaint from reservists ; in order to put the mind of the public at rest, surely nothing could be lost by adopting the suggestion in the latter part of the Question?

The Prime Minister: I am profoundly conscious that this is a very difficult human problem. That is why we have tried to deal with it, and I think we have now dealt with it, in a manner which is

fair and just. The hon. Gentleman asked at the end of his Question if we would appoint a Select Committee to look into our policy over Suez. To that I say, "No, Sir." If the hon. Gentleman wants a Select Committee, perhaps we could have one to inquire into the contradictory convulsions of Her Majesty's Opposition.

Mr. Stokes: As one of the main anxieties is the length of the call-up, will the Prime Minister say when he will be able to make a statement as to the likely length of the call-up? Will he also say why it is impossible to return home the men serving in this country, who number about 14,000, since there is no real military reason for detaining them at the present time?

The Prime Minister: I think that the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly justified in his first question, and at the earliest possible moment I will make a statement in reply to it. As regards the second part, that is wrapped up with whatever decisions may have to be taken and with the precautions which have been taken. As regards the first question, I will undertake to give the earliest reply in my power.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLITICAL RALLIES (STATEMENTS OF POLICY)

Mr. Lewis: asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware of the growing practice of Ministers announcing the Government's policy with regard to legislation to political rallies; and whether he will arrange for these announcements to be made to the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister: Political rallies of all parties are commonly the occasion for general statements of policy. I do not think it can be said that the Government have failed to keep the House fully informed of all matters of policy and legislation.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, Sir, but it is the fact, and is the Prime Minister not aware of it, that the Conservative Party and the Government are continually making announcements of legislative intentions whilst at the same time continually ignoring Questions put by Members of this House? Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware of the fact that just before the House went into Recess Questions were asked on rent restriction and the Minister


refused to give any answer, yet the answer was given to an outside body? Is that right or proper? Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that this Parliament should be treated with more respect?

The Prime Minister: I can only assure the House that we shall not hesitate to give hon. Members very full information about our proposals for rent restriction.

Mr. H. Wilson: Whilst we understand the desire of Ministers to find something to say to the Conservative Party Conference to cheer it up, does the right hon. Gentleman not think that within four or five weeks of the Gracious Speech it is entirely wrong for Ministers to announce impending legislation in anticipation of it? Furthermore, since the announcement to which my hon. Friend has referred could, and indeed as far as I know did, have immeasurable effect on movements on the Stock Exchange, should not this have been dealt with in accordance with ordinary Parliamentary procedure?

The Prime Minister: As regards the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, I am sure that we shall have plenty of opportunity to discuss whether our proposals on rent policy or those outlined at the Labour Party Conference are the better proposals, and we can argue that. I do not think that the outline which my right hon. Friend gave was inconsistent with the practice which should be observed, having in mind the fact that we shall, of course, give the House very full information about our proposals on rent restriction.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Is it not a good thing to make announcements of this nature some time before Parliament meets, so that the thick heads opposite have more time to think them over?

Oral Answers to Questions — HYDROGEN BOMB TESTS

Mr. Swingler: asked the Prime Minister if he will now initiate the calling of a conference of the heads of Governments of the Great Powers for the purpose of making an international agreement to ban hydrogen bomb tests.

The Prime Minister: In the view of Her Majesty's Government, the question of banning nuclear test explosions should

be treated as an integral part of a comprehensive disarmament plan. Such a plan is best considered by the Disarmament Commission of the United Nations and its Sub-Committee. As regard the limitation of tests, which is another question, my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has a Question on this subject tomorrow.

Mr. Swingler: Does not the Prime Minister recall that at the beginning of July he said in the House that he was prepared to initiate discussions on the subject of hydrogen bomb tests independently of the general disarmament discussions if he thought there was an opportunity of reaching rapid and general agreement on the subject? Would he say, therefore, if he still has it in mind to take this initiative, and at what stage he conceives it would be worth while to do so?

The Prime Minister: There are two questions there, banning and limitation. Several times I have told the House that I think we should begin by limitation. Banning, of course, would have to be agreed by a large number of countries. As regards limitation, my right hon. and learned Friend has a statement to make on that subject tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — PARIS (PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Prime Minister the purpose of his recent official visit to Paris; what subjects were discussed ; and what agreements were concluded.

The Prime Minister: I have nothing to add to the communiqué which was issued after our meeting.

Mr. Hughes: Did not the Prime Minister take advantage of his visit to Paris to tell the French Government that we have made ourselves ridiculous to the outside world, that we have been saved from war through the restraint of the United States and the Soviet Union, and that the time has come for a change in policy?

The Prime Minister: I was very glad to find myself in complete agreement with the French Socialist Prime Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions — CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (LEGISLATION)

Mr. S. Silverman: asked the Prime Minister whether he will now state the Government's policy with regard to the further progress of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill.

The Prime Minister: The Government have in preparation legislative proposals in relation to capital punishment which will be laid before the House early in the next Session. Details of these proposals will be given in the usual manner. Any new Abolition Bill which might be introduced in the next Session would be subject to the usual rights and opportunities of private Members of this House.

Mr. Silverman: Is the House to infer from that statement that the Government, contrary to their own pledge and contrary to all constitutional propriety, propose to base their policy not on the considered judgment of the House of Commons but on the judgment of the House of Lords? Does he not think that it would be a grave constitutional breach of duty not to afford the House of Commons a reasonable opportunity of exercising its rights under the Parliament Act if it wishes to do so?

The Prime Minister: Perhaps I might remind the hon. Gentleman of what I said on 17th July :
As the House knows, the Private Member's Bill introduced by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) was rejected in another place. The Government are giving consideration to the whole question of capital punishment in the light of these circumstances. It is my intention to make a statement on this subject before the Session ends."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th July, 1956; Vol. 556, c. 1041.]
I have now made the statement, and I would ask the House to await the terms of the Bill which Her Majesty's Government propose.

Mr. Gaitskell: While the question of capital punishment has been treated as a non-party matter and a free vote has applied, there is a constitutional issue here, and I must ask the Prime Minister whether he does not feel, in view of the conflict between this House and another place, that it is the duty of the Government to facilitate the introduction of a Bill under the provisions of

the Parliament Act on the same lines as the Bill which was carried by this House in the present Session?

The Prime Minister: The Government do not have to invoke the Parliament Act. That Act is automatic. I am here dealing with an appeal which was made by some most eminent authorities in another place, ecclesiastical and legal authorities and people like Lord Samuel, the Leader of the Liberal Party—and the reply which was given to it—that the Government should endeavour to find a Measure which would result in common agreement on this difficult issue. The Government have a responsibility to do that, and we are entitled to ask the House to examine our Bill before taking a decision about any other Measure which hon. Members want to put forward.

Mr. Gaitskell: The Government are, of course, entitled, if they so desire, to bring in another Bill. I am not concerned with that. What I am concerned with is the action which the Government propose to take in view of the fact that there is a conflict between this House and another place—[Interruption.]—yes, this House having passed my hon. Friend's Bill in the present Session and the other place having thrown it out. That being the position, surely it is right that the Government should enable this House, if it so desires, to operate the Parliament Act. Is the Prime Minister aware, therefore, that a duty devolves upon the Government, irrespective of what they may themselves do with another Measure, to facilitate the introduction of a Bill on the lines of my hon. Friend's Bill which was passed this Session?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir; that is not the Government's duty. The position is that the Parliament Act operates automatically. A Private Member's Bill has the facilities of a Private Member's Bill, and the Act operates automatically. There is no Government function detailed by the Parliament Act in that respect.

Mr. C. Davies: While it is right that the Parliament Act operates automatically, is it not the duty of the Government to afford the House of Commons—for whose protection the Act was passed ; it was not passed for the protection of any


Government—the opportunity of exercising its will under that Act, so that its own will, in spite of anything that might be done in another place, may become an Act of Parliament?

The Prime Minister: What the Government have sought to do is to meet the very strong appeals which have recently been made, particularly by the Leader of the Liberal Party in another place, to try to find a Measure which would meet the views of the nation in this respect. This does not, of course, in any way limit the rights of private Members, which remain untrammelled and untouched.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Since the matter was treated as a House of Commons matter and was decided on a free vote, has not the Leader of the House a duty and responsibility to ensure that facilities are given to carry out the will of the House?

The Prime Minister: I must remind the House that as long ago as 23rd February I said as regards the action of another place :
As for what another place may do in hypothetical circumstances, I would say that there has never been a Government …which tried to attempt to answer. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd February, 1956 ; Vol. 549, c. 577.]
that question in advance. I would say that it is quite clear that the obligations given by my right hon. Friend were in respect of the last Session of Parliament.

Mr. Griffiths: I was not asking what the Government were proposing to do. I was asking what the Leader of the House, the representative of the whole House, proposes to do about a matter upon which the House has declared its opinion. I would address my question to the Leader of the House.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): I cannot improve upon the answers given by the Prime Minister. [Interruption.] The House had much better—I respond to the request of right hon. Gentlemen opposite that I should listen to the mood of the House—wait and see this legislation.

Mr. Shinwell: Setting aside all the talk about the Parliament Act, will the Prime

Minister answer a very simple question? Is it his intention, on behalf of the Government, to bring in a Bill whose contents will run counter to the decision of the House of Commons? If that is his intention, will not that mean that the Government intend to flout the decision of the House of Commons?

The Prime Minister: I do not think that will be at all a fair conclusion, because any Measure introduced by the Government is subject to amendment by the House if it so decides.

Mr. Silverman: Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman to bear in mind three things? The first is that the Parliament Act cannot operate automatically but requires a decision of the House of Commons to present substantially the same Bill before any question under the Parliament Act can arise. Consequently, what I ask him is that the House may have the opportunity to decide for itself whether it wishes to persist or whether it does not wish to persist.
Secondly, will he bear in mind that the pledge given by the Leader of the House in winding up the debate for the Government on the occasion of the Second Reading, in reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), was that the Government would base their policy upon the decision of the House on that occasion?
Thirdly, will he bear in mind that the suggested compromise proposals in the debate in another place were precisely those which the Government pressed upon the notice of the House of Commons at two earlier stages and which the House of Commons decisively rejected on both occasions?

The Prime Minister: With regard to the last part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, I must ask the House to await the Bill before it pronounces on what is contents may be. With regard to a Private Member's Bill, it is perfectly true that if there were a Private Member's Bill in the new Session there would certainly be a free vote on it.

SUEZ CANAL

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement on the Suez Canal question.
Since the House last met on 13th September, there have been, as hon. Members know, some important developments.
The Foreign Ministers of the 18 Powers which supported the proposals endorsed at the first London Conference met at a second Conference in London to consider the situation caused by the Egyptian Government's refusal to negotiate on the basis of those proposals. They, that is to say, the 18 countries, decided unanimously that certain observations made by Colonel Nasser after Mr. Menzies' departure were too imprecise to afford a useful basis for discussion. This Conference further decided to establish a Suez Canal Users' Association, to function in accordance with the principles laid down in the Declaration agreed on 21st September.
Fifteen of the 18 nations have now become members of the Association, which was officially inaugurated on 1st October. The remaining three have reserved their decision, but have continued to be represented at meetings of the Association as observers. The Users' Association has held a number of meetings, in which the problems of organisation, finance and operation have been thoroughly examined. Some progress has been made, and an Administrator has been appointed. It is our hope that the work of building up the Association will proceed rapidly.
These developments, including the discussions with our friends at the second London Conference, satisfied us that the moment had come to place this question before the Security Council. We had, a fortnight earlier, foreshadowed this move by our preliminary letter to the Security Council. On 23rd September the representatives of the United Kingdom and France in New York addressed a joint letter to the President of the Security Council and requested him to summon a meeting of the Council to consider the situation caused by the unilateral action of the Egyptian Government.
The Security Council met between 5th October and 13th October. I will not pretend to the House that Her Majesty's Government are fully satisfied with the results of these discussions. Once again, attempts to achieve a just settlement of a problem have been frustrated by a veto—the seventy-eighth—cast by the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, certain solid advantages were gained. The most significant feature was that the case which the French Foreign Minister and I laid before the Security Council received overwhelming endorsement. Nine of the 11 members of the Council, specifically approved the proposals of the 18 Powers and called upon Egypt either to accept them, or to put forward promptly an alternative system with no less effective guarantees.
Similarly, the non-Communist Powers also endorsed the Suez Canal Users' Association, recognised its competence to receive dues payable by ships of its members, and expressed the opinion that the competent Egyptian authorities should cooperate with the Association to ensure the satisfactory operation of the Canal, and free and open transit through it, pending a definitive settlement.
The position then, at the end of the Security Council meeting, was, and still is, that the Egyptian Government have been called on to put forward promptly their proposals. They have not done so. Part of the resolution at the Security Council was unanimously approved. That part set out six principles which must govern any solution of Suez Canal problems.
We are told that the Government of Egypt accept those principles. Their representative at the Security Council said so. But there seems to be a gap between Egypt's acceptance of the principles and definition of her part of the means to apply them. What has to be done is to construct a system to provide the users of the Canal with adequate guarantees of efficiency and nondiscrimination to replace the system which has been destroyed by the Egyptian Government. For this we need proposals, not the mere acceptance of principles. We still await these proposals.
Throughout the negotiations Her Majesty's Government have kept in close


touch with the other members of the 18-Power group who represent over 90 per cent. of the user interest in the Canal from all five continents. It is our determination to continue to work for a solution under which there will be guarantees to the users not less effective than those sought by the proposals of the 18 Powers.

Mr. Robens: As the six principles advocated by the users have been accepted by the Egyptian Government, is it not right that the next step should be the opening of direct negotiations by the representatives of the Users' Association with the Egyptian Government? Does not the fact that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has indicated that the proposals made by Colonel Nasser after Mr. Menzies' departure were too imprecise seem to argue that it would be as well for there now to be direct talks rather than that both sides should be sitting and waiting for each other to act?

Mr. Lloyd: I spent four days in New York with the French Foreign Minister and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, having precisely those direct talks to see whether it was possible to achieve a basis for negotiation. Definite proposals must be put forward which can constitute a basis for negotiation.

Mr. Bowles: As perhaps the only hon. Member who has been through the Suez Canal twice during the Recess—I went to see what hon. Members opposite were talking about—I found that the position was that there was no difficulty at all about transit south or north.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the hon. Member can couch what he has to say in an interrogative form.

Mr. Bowles: Why is the Foreign Secretary assuming that transit is not being given completely indiscriminately and efficiently? Does he not realise that by withdrawing the European pilots and now threatening to withhold Canal dues the Government are giving a lead in the stoppage of transit through the Canal?

Mr. Lloyd: I do not at all agree with the hon. Member. There are two aspects, technical and political, of free and open transit through the Canal. Any Government—and, I should have thought, even an Opposition, too—would be very wise to require guarantees for observance under both aspects.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. William Yates.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Yates: I hope that the Foreign Secretary will not pay attention to the empty compliments which I have just received from the benches opposite.
Is he aware that I, too, have been to the Suez Canal? Will he please tell the British people and the Conservative Party that it is not a prerequisite of any negotiation or settlement that Britain and France should demand to use the right of force before consultation with the United Nations, remembering that we are signatories of the Briand-Kellogg Pact?

Mr. Lloyd: The position of Her Majesty's Government on this matter has been clearly stated. We will do everything we can to ensure a peaceful settlement. We have been to the Security Council in an endeavour to procure a peaceful settlement. Nevertheless, what is at stake here is the issue of the sanctity of international contracts. In such a matter, for the British people force will always be the last recourse. Of course we want a peaceful settlement, and we have done our best to work through the United Nations.

Mr. Brockway: May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman two questions? The first is incidental to the broader picture. Will be confirm or deny a report in the Press today of serious differences between the American Government on the one hand and the British and French Governments on the other about the proportion of tolls to be paid to Egypt and whether, if our intention is to keep the Canal open, the proportion of tolls which Britain and France suggest would be inadequate for the purpose?
Secondly, and much more important, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman, for the sake of bringing about a settlement of this issue, put technical formality on one side and accept the proposal that there should be a meeting at Geneva between representatives of Egypt and the other countries concerned, particularly to consider the proposals of the Indian Government, which go so far to meet the demands which have been made?

Mr. Lloyd: So far as the question affecting the Users' Association is concerned, the matter is rather complicated,


and I would rather that a specific Question were put down. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can accuse us of being too technical, or standing on our dignity too much. At the United Nations I proposed, on behalf of the United Kingdom Government, that the Security Council should meet in private session. At the private session I proposed that we should have exploratory conversations direct with representatives of the Egyptian Government. We had those for four days, during which we did our best to try to find a basis for negotiation. I really think that now it rests with the Egyptian Government to define their position.

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask two questions of the Foreign Secretary? First, is it the view of Her Majesty's Government that the necessary guarantees to users can be obtained only if there is an international board of management, day-to-day management, or can Her Majesty's Government conceive of the possibility of satisfactory guarantees by a different system? Secondly, has the right hon. and learned Gentleman received from the representative of the Indian Government the new proposals, which were reported in the Press two days ago, and which seem to many of us to offer a very reasonable half-way house solution to the whole problem?

Mr. Lloyd: I still think that international co-operation is the best method of achieving the necessary guarantees. I think it the best and, in fact, the simplest method, but we have never said that it is the only method. What the Security Council's resolution does is to cast upon Egypt the obligation to put forward proposals for guarantees. None the less, we should want to examine those proposals carefully to see whether they did give the same guarantees as international day-today operation.
It is quite true that I have received a copy of the Indian proposals. I think that the first question about them to be decided is whether they constitute the proposals of the Egyptian Government. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, there are certain matters on which they need clarification and precision.

Mr. Gaitskell: While welcoming, so far as it goes, the answer to my first question, may I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he thinks—

in view of the reasonably favourable reply about the Indian Government's proposals—it really would be desirable if a move were made to bring the parties together with a view to agreement on the basis of those principles? Is it the case that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has offered his services in this connection, and has the Foreign Secretary any other idea about clarifying the Egyptian view of the Indian proposals?

Mr. Lloyd: I really think that if right hon. and hon. Members want progress in this matter, the best way to get it is for the Egyptian Government, as quickly as possible, to put forward their proposals for consideration.

Mr. Robens: Since the right hon. and learned Gentleman told us that he spent four days in direct negotiation with the Egyptian Government—as, obviously, the principles were not a matter for argument, having already been agreed, and as the imprecise nature of Colonel Nasser's words must have at that stage been made more precise—would he tell the House exactly what is the sticking point between Egypt and ourselves?

Mr. Lloyd: The sticking point is that we have no proposals to implement the principles which emerged at the end of the four days' discussion. The suggestion that those principles were agreed before we began is untrue ; those principles emerged as the result of the four days' discussion. But it was made quite clear that there must be means to implement them. We had some discussion on the means to implement them, but at the moment the position is that we have had no precise proposals, and the Security Council recognised that. It received a report in private session from the Secretary-General, and it recognised where, in its view, the obligation now lies. I think that we shall make more progress by stating firmly that we await those Egyptian proposals.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is no Question before the House.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on Government Business exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[The Prime Minister.]

Orders of the Day — HILL FARMING [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to extend the time within which livestock rearing land improvement schemes may be submitted under the Hill Farming Act, 1946 (hereinafter referred to as "the principal Act"), increase the maximum amount that may be paid in the aggregate by way of grants in respect of the cost of work done in accordance with such schemes and extend the time within which the said maximum may be further increased by order of the Minister of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food (hereinafter referred to as "the Minister") and the Secretary of State ; and to prolong the powers under the principal Act of the Minister and the Secretary of State to make subsidy payments in respect of hill sheep and hill cattle, it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of moneys provided by Parliament, of—

(1) any increase in the sums authorised by section one of the principal Act to be paid out of such moneys by the Minister and the Secretary of State by way of grants in respect of the cost of work done in accordance with schemes approved under that section, being an increase attributable to provisions of the said Act of the present Session—

(a) extending by seven years the period within which schemes may be submitted under the said section one for the approval of the Minister or the Secretary of State ;
(b) increasing by five million pounds the maximum amount that may be paid in the aggregate by way of grants under that section, and extending by seven years the period within which an order providing for increasing, by not more than two million pounds, the said maximum amount may be made by the Minister and the Secretary of State ;

(2) any increase in the sums which, under section thirteen of the principal Act, are to be defrayed out of such moneys, being an increase attributable to provisions of the said Act of the present Session increasing by seven—

(a) the number of relevant days by reference to which the making by the Minister and the Secretary of State of payments in respect of sheep comprised in flocks kept on hill land is authorised by that section ; and
(b) the number of years by reference to which the making by the Minister and the Secretary of State of payments in respect of cattle grazed on such land is so authorised.

Resolution agreed to.

HILL FARMING BILL

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Clause 1.—(EXTENSION OF PERIOD FOR SUBMISSION OF LIVESTOCK REARING LAND IMPROVEMENT SCHEMES AND INCREASE OF AMOUNT AVAILABLE FOR IMPROVEMENT GRANTS.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

3.55 p.m.

Mr. Edward du Cann: I should like to refer to the increase in the amount of money made available for improvement grants by this Bill and, in particular, to the way in which this money is to be spent. I should like to ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary two short questions. I had hoped to move a new Clause in an effort to clarify the situation, but I understand that is not possible, because it goes beyond the terms of the Money Resolution.
I feel that the present situation contains the seeds of some slight confusion and that may be as well at this stage if it were cleared up. I also feel that the money referred to in Clause 1 of the Bill will not necessarily be spent as economically or effectively as it might if the Hill Farming Act, 1946, did not disbar the person carrying out the work in respect of which the grant is made from charging the cost—or at any rate, 50 per cent. of it—of his work. I am not suggesting that this is a matter of major importance. These Hill Farming and Livestock Rearing Acts are very good Acts indeed, as was generally agreed in this House when we considered the Bill on Second Reading. None the less, this particular matter is a minor but, I think to some hill farmers, a very irritating blemish.
May I quote, first, the offending Clause of the Hill Farming Act, 1946? It is Clause 2 (1) and it states :
The amount which may be paid by way of an improvement grant in respect of the cost of any work shall be one half of the cost of that work so far as approved by the appropriate Minister as having been reasonably incurred.
When we considered this matter during the Second Reading debate, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary was good enough to refer to this point in some detail. He said that the point had been made by


hon. Members during the debate. He referred to this Clause which, he said, was quite specific in that it defined exactly what could qualify for payment. He pointed out that the words, "having been reasonably incurred "debar the farmer from receiving any grant in respect of his own work. He went on to say, very generously, and I know that this point has his sympathy :
We have listened very carefully to what has been said on the subject today and we will give further consideration to the point to see whether it is possible to move from the position which has been held for the last ten years. We take the weight of the point. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th July, 1956 ; Vol. 556, c. 1642–43.]
My first question to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is whether he has had an opportunity to consider this matter, and if so, what further views he has on it, and whether he can go any distance towards helping the farmers concerned in this matter.
My second question on the subject of the expenditure of this money derives from the leaflet describing the general conditions under which these grants were made. The official reference number of the leaflet is H.F.24. In the general notes which form part of Appendix B, dealing with the cost of work, there is a subhead, "Wages and Salaries", which states :
Allowance will normally be made at rates approved by the Minister for the labour of all persons engaged on the work including members of the applicant's family or household, or usual farm stafl. …
That we know and, of course, it is excellent. It goes on :
No allowance will be made, however, for the personal services of the applicant, save in exceptional circumstances.
4.0 p.m.
What are these exceptional circumstances? On the face of the matter, it would seem that, on the one hand, it is clearly understood that no grant can be made in respect of a farmer's own work and yet, on the other hand, that there are exceptions. Would the Parliamentary Secretary kindly tell us how these two apparently contradictory statements marry up? The farming community will be grateful if he will do so.
Put very simply, the situation is that the way in which the Hill Farming Act, 1946, is drawn precludes a farmer from obtaining a grant in respect of half the

cost of his own work. If one considers the circumstances for a moment one sees how important this provision is in respect of money. Applicants for grants inevitably live in isolated areas and therefore it is sometimes difficult for them to get contractors to come to the farm. On occasion, farmers are at the mercy of contractors and have no freedom of choice. It is inevitable, therefore, that the work costs more. I have been told by the Somersetshire representatives of the National Farmers' Union that there are villages where contractors cannot cope with the volume of work, which means that work under these Acts is being slowed down.
There is much work that a farmer can do himself quite easily, like digging foundations, hauling stones for farm roads, laying mole drains, or making repairs with home-grown timber. He would want to do this work, and in the case of one-man farms the farmer is precluded from benefit by the drafting of the Section which I have quoted. This means a burden on the taxpayer greater than it need be, and greater cost to the individual farmer.
It is true in some cases, although I do not say in many, that the Act is not used to full advantage, perhaps because the farmer must pay 50 per cent. of the cost of the work done by himself. He must pay money with which he would otherwise do still more work, if he had the opportunity. It may be argued that if the farmer were allowed to charge the cost of his own work there would be danger of abuse. I recognise that that is a point of great importance which requires serious consideration.
I have already referred to the excellent Arton Wilson Report. Paragraph 126 of that Report suggests that grants in a marginal production scheme should be based upon the estimated cost. I know the point is not quite parallel, but it is difficult to see why the same reasoning cannot be applied in hill farming legislation.
It may be stated that sufficient safeguards already exist. On the Second Reading of this Bill the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) quoted with great effect from the Arton Wilson Committee's Report. He pointed out that the procedure for applying for these grants was exceedingly complicated


because the farmer had to go through four separate departments of the Ministry before he could get a grant at all. The hon. Member made the point, and I absolutely agree with him, that while there should be thorough vetting there should not be too much vetting, complication and duplication.
The hon. Member pointed out that there were already sufficient safeguards. This is not a case of a man trying to get some sort of maintenance allowance for Income Tax purposes for decorating his own house, where there is no proper check. This is a very different matter indeed. We know that there is ample justification for these Acts, the Hill Farming Act, 1946, and the Livestock Rearing Act. They are excellent legislation in every way and have had an important practical effect. We have only to take a short journey into the hills to see the great effect which those Acts have had. We see excellent, flourishing farms because of the 50 per cent. grant to farmers to help them to improve farms which were previously inefficient or uneconomic units but are now producing the food which the nation needs very urgently. Excellent examples of such farms were given on the Second Reading.
It is a pity that so fine and flourishing a picture is impaired by the tiny but important blemish to which I have referred. I know that the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary are sympathetic to the points which I have raised and I hope that the Committee will also be sympathetic to them. I hope that it may be possible to give practical effect to my suggestions.

Mr. Roderic Bowen: I have much sympathy with the case which has just been put to the Committee by the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann). The hill farming community will be deeply grateful to him for raising those points in such an effective way.
During the operation of the Hill Farming Act there has been a continual sense of grievance, particularly on the part of the small hill-farmer. It is extremely difficult for him to get labour. He must use the labour which is most readily available and is most skilled and knowledgeable, that is, his own labour. However, if he is not to deprive himself of financial benefit under these schemes he

must seek other labour, under difficult conditions. Something should be done to relieve this position. As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, the cost to the Government would be reduced if help were given to these small farmers.
As the hon. Gentleman also pointed out, the Arton Wilson Report referred to the advantage of paying 50 per cent. of the estimated cost of marginal production schemes rather than of the actual cost. There is always a disadvantage in paying out on estimated cost, but there are obvious advantages. If payment were made on the estimated cost of these schemes we should get over the sense of grievance.
The Parliamentary Secretary agreed on the Second Reading that there was a sense of grievance. It exists particularly with the small farmers and it could very easily be put right. I therefore urge that the whole matter be looked at again in the most sympathetic light.

Mr. Tudor Watkins: I wish to follow the points made by both hon. Members who have spoken and which have displayed a united front among the political parties.
We have had ten years' experience of this legislation and I am sure that the Minister can now give us an assurance that he will look at the position and at least try to experiment to improve it. There is no better place for such an experiment than the area covered by the Mid-Wales Investigation Report. Even if the Minister cannot consider the matter retrospectively he might start from the end of the present period, 6th November, or from the Royal Assent to the Bill, and find out whether the arguments which have been put forward are justified.
The main trouble is the difficulty of obtaining labour in upland farms, which are unable to put forward schemes because they cannot get contractors. The Minister knows that in the White Paper on Rural Wales the Welsh Agricultural Organisation Society was to be asked to come into the picture on a large scale to help these small people. It was even turned down.
It is a great disadvantage to these small farmers if they are unable to get a grant for the labour they put into schemes. There may be some administrative difficulties about the proposal, but surely the


Ministry could supervise the work. The Ministry would not be expected to give grants to a farmer who said that he had put in work in order to build a house. If he were constructing fencing, on which perhaps he would be a greater expert than anyone outside his farm, that would be a case to which consideration should be given. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give consideration to it and give a reply to what on Second Reading he promised to look into.
Most Government Departments now know exactly what land comes under hill farming and livestock rearing. I think that there should be closer liaison with the Forestry Commission. I know of a particular case in Breconshire where the landlord was quite reasonable to the tenant and was prepared to go in for a scheme under the Hill Farming Act. They agreed to do it, but the Ministry of Agriculture said that a portion of the land would be better suited to forestry and, in the end, the Forestry Commission took the whole farm.
Consideration should be given so that it could be known in what areas the Commission is interested. It would be unwise if the Minister of Agriculture suggested that a 50 per cent. grant should be given for certain improvements and then the Forestry Commission took over that land. I should be obliged if the Minister would tell us what has happened to the surveys which have been undertaken by the Forestry Commission. If they are to be continued the Ministry of Agriculture will be able to know exactly what land is suitable for forestry and what is suitable for livestock rearing and hill farming schemes.
I am glad that the Minister has come to my aid. Unfortunately, owing to illness, I was not able to participate in the debate on the Mid-Wales Investigation Report. In that debate everyone was concerned about the question of compulsory amalgamation. The Ministry has given an assurance that it does not agree with the Land Commission Report that there should be compulsory amalgamation. I want an assurance that the Ministry's officers will not from now on say to farmers in my constituency that they cannot agree to certain schemes unless they are amalgamated.
I have brought to the attention of the Minister a case in which a farm was not

allowed to go forward with a scheme because it would not amalgamate with a farm lower down the valley. I am sure my constituents welcome the attention the Minister has given to that matter, but I am anxious that he should say publicly that he does not agree with compulsory amalgamation, so that people in Wales may know what are the intentions of the Ministry. In my opinion, they are ideal and I read with interest what the right hon. Gentleman said in the debate on the Report.

Mr. G. B. Drayson: Since we gave the Bill a Second Reading on 20th July, I hope that the Minister has had an opportunity very carefully to consider the question of application of the farmer's own labour to approved schemes. As has been said by other hon. Members this afternoon, a genuine grievance has existed for some years. It is particularly apparent in remote farming areas such as exist in my constituency, where it is difficult to find contractors prepared to undertake the work and where there would be considerable delay in putting schemes into operation through contractors. I hope we shall hear that further thought has been given to the question and a formula arrived at whereby labour provided by the farmer himself can be taken into account for grant.
I am sure that if that could be done these schemes would go ahead far more quickly than at present. It might well result in a saving to the Government rather than that the fear of abuse would be an important factor. There would be a saving by giving this concession. I think it appropriate that on the first day of reassembly we should be discussing the Committee stage of this Bill. That suggests how seriously the Government regard this matter and the contribution which hill farmers can make to our economy.
I hope that a concession can be given on the lines suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) and other hon. Members this afternoon.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. Sidney Dye: The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) is to be congratulated on having tabled a new Clause which was not called, as it was out of order, and yet getting in a speech in support of it


on the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill." Most back benchers are in the dilemma of seeing certain difficulties in the administration of this Measure and being unable to find Amendments which we could submit to cover those difficulties.
This Bill is merely a continuation of the main principles of the Act for a further seven years, but the circumstances in which we are to continue the Act for a further seven years are quite different from what they were when the Bill was introduced ten years ago. All work in connection with these improvement schemes now costs considerably more than it did when the original Bill was introduced. If, in the course of ten years, certain people have been able to make use of these grants, most of them have been people on hill farms who are better off and have more capital.
At present, the greatest possible hardship falls on the smaller farmer. If he is to carry out any of these schemes he must borrow the money, and interest rates on borrowing are so much higher. Therefore, if, in the next seven years, the smaller men are to make as much use of this Measure as, in the last ten years, use has been made of it by the larger farmers the Government must show more generosity in administering the Measure. That is one aspect of the way in which the Government can help smaller hill farmers to a greater extent than in the past.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Watkins) pointed out, in many cases it may be that the farmer may be able to do fencing, ditching or even road making and do more work in a day than could be done by contractors' men who have to come from a distance. The farmers may be even more skilful at doing that job and as they are more skilful it may be more efficiently and economically done. There may have to be a differentiation between the types of work for which the labour of hill farmers or of their families or friends may be considered for grant purposes.
As I have said, interest rates have gone up, the cost of fertilisers, materials and labour have all gone up, and the difficulties of obtaining labour have also increased. All this indicates that unless the Government have a more generous

way of interpreting the Sections of the main Measure it does not look as though the success achieved in the past ten years can be continued through the next seven years.
As hon. Members will not have an opportunity of discussing these arrangements for another seven years, it looks as if the Parliamentary Secretary will be called upon to tell us rather more than he did on Second Reading about the Government's methods of helping to meet the greater cost of carrying out these improvement schemes by people who may not be financially as well off now as they were ten years ago. That is why we want clarification from him on this Clause. Unless we and the people concerned can see that it will be profitable to them to carry out improvements, and that they will be able to find the labour and the money to do them, I think that the Bill will gradually peter out and become of little value to those whom it is intended to help.

Mr. William Whitelaw: I want to reinforce very briefly the plea made by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) on the subject of farmers being allowed to charge for their own work on these schemes. We are all aware of the importance of helping the small farmer.
On the Second Reading of the Bill, it was generally agreed on both sides of the House that, while the Bill would do much to help large farmers, tenants and landlords on the hills, it would not do much to help those with small farms who lacked capital. If they have not the capital, they find it difficult to pay their share of the scheme ; and, secondly, they do not employ any labour other than their own. I find it difficult to see why, if they do not normally employ any other labour, they should be expected to do so when undertaking these schemes.
I believe that this is one way of helping the small man on the hills and on the marginal land, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give us some help in this debate.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): I sympathise with the feeling of my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee and of hon. Members opposite in their


concern about the position of the small farmer whose own work might be used in these schemes. I can assure the Committee that we have given the most careful consideration to this problem in the interval between the Second Reading of the Bill and now. My right hon. Friend and I realise that there is a difficulty and that farmers have been conscious of it for some time, but I have to tell the Committee, with regret, that we have not been able to meet the point. That, of course, is why there is no Government Amendment on the Notice Paper. I must congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) in getting a new Clause put down, and, although it did not meet with your approval, Sir Charles, nevertheless in making his excellent speech upon the subject.
I should like to deal briefly with some of the points and to make a general comment on them. First, on the point which my hon. Friend asked me about the "exceptional circumstances" which are referred to in the leaflet. Those exceptional circumstances, unlike most exceptional circumstances, really are exceptional circumstances. They are only visualised as arising when a farmer who applied has, as in the past, been a part-time farmer who, because he would put in more hours work on his own holding, would reduce his earnings from working in a quarry or something like that ; and so these exceptional circumstances arise. In the present circumstances, and for a good many years now, it has not been the practice to approve schemes unless they will make the unit an economic one.
This bears on the point raised by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Watkins). We are certainly not advising farmers that there is compulsion to amalgamate holdings. Naturally, they are free to do what they like with their holdings, but we have to tell them that we cannot approve an application for a holding to receive a grant under the Hill Farming Acts unless, when the scheme is completed, the farm will, in our judgment, yield an average earning to the farmer at least equivalent to a farm-worker's wage. We feel that that is the basic minimum in terms of what

we regard as an economic holding. Certainly, there is no element of compulsion.
I listened with sympathy to the hon. Member's plea for an experiment to allow the farmer's own work to be taken into account, and I do not doubt that he could find a place in his constituency where that experiment could take place ; but, despite his plea, I am afraid that, for the reasons which I am about to give, we really cannot agree to it.
The fact is that this problem has been examined most carefully by our predecessors and by ourselves. Very strong arguments have been advanced for including the farmer's labour, and they could not have been better stated than they have been this afternoon by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. There are, however, two aspects involved. First, there is the aspect of principle, which I will not argue this afternoon, except to say that the principle involved goes far wider than these Acts. It applies to a large number of other grants and it is a principle which can be argued either way.

On the question of practice, we come up against difficulties which we feel that we cannot overcome—difficulties which have been referred to this afternoon. One is that there is really no way of satisfactorily checking what work the individual farmer has put in. Labour employed on the farm, on the other hand, is quite easy to check and that has been done in very many cases. So I am afraid that we concluded that, despite our sympathy with the small farmer, we really could not meet the case.

I would give my hon. Friends, and especially my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton, who, I know, feels so strongly on this matter, one word of consolation. We did try the approach which hon. Members have mentioned this afternoon and which was suggested by the Arton Wilson Committee's Report, namely, that we should proceed by estimates where this work was concerned—marginal production work—and that this would be simpler administratively, and would meet the case of the small farmer who does the work himself. I think that this is possible in some kind of work.

Shortly, we shall be bringing before the House a Bill to enable us to make


grants for building silos, and there we think that we can proceed by the system of unit costs. No doubt hon. Members will be interested to study the Bill in due course, but the application of that principle is limited. There are many kinds of work on a farm and estimates vary from one farm to another. Any standard rate of estimate would inevitably be unfair where the farming conditions are more costly.

I would not say that it is impossible for us to go further in that field in the future in other ways. If it is possible, we shall do so, as we are anxious to meet this case where possible. I would mention, as a side wind in recognition of the small farmer's difficulties, that we have increased the rate of marginal production grant to 85 per cent. since 1st August and that will undoubtedly in some respects be of considerable help to these men.

4.30 p.m.

I hope that the Committee will recognise with me the very formidable difficulties there would be in making a change here, and recognise, also, that we have examined the matter most earnestly and in great detail to see whether we could find some way, but, despite the fact that we have not been able to, I believe that schemes will not be handicapped in going forward. I think that was the point made by the hon. Member for Norfolk, Southwest (Mr. Dye), whose anxiety was that farmers would be handicapped in going forward in present circumstances.

Naturally, we shall not get the same rate of submission of schemes as in the past. The less difficult ones have now been done. The peak of applications was reached, I should think, two or three years ago, but they are still running at a high rate and we have every reason to think that there are some thousands of farms which will still come in. Many of these men take time to make up their minds whether or not to come in and like to see how their neighbours come on who have tried the scheme. Consequently, we shall have a considerable number of them throughout the United Kingdom coming in during the coming years and the provision we have made here will be adequate to meet the needs of these farmers in promoting these schemes.

The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor mentioned the need for co-operation with the Forestry Commission. My right hon. Friend is most anxious to bring that co-operation as close as possible, and I think that a number of recent actions that have been taken have brought about a really close and, I think, most amicable relationship between the agricultural and forestry sides which should ensure that such accidents as those to which he referred do not happen in the future.

I expect that the hon. Member will have noticed that in, I think, the debate on Mid-Wales we referred to the fact that the Forestry Commission has now agreed to fence its upland forests. That is a significant and costly thing for it to do, but, more than that, it is a very friendly gesture which, I hope, will go a long way to improving relationships in those areas. But that is only one small aspect. The Forestry Commission is most anxious to do all it can to work closely with us, to make sure that it makes the best of the land it can use and that we do the same. I hope that, with that explanation, the Committee will be willing to give this Clause its approval.

Mr. Drayson: The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned the marginal production grants, which now go up to 85 per cent. Am I wrong in assuming that, in that case, the farmer may charge for his own labour under the marginal production scheme?

Mr. Nugent: No, he may not.

Mr. A. J. Champion: The Joint Parliamentary Secretary has put his finger on the spot that matters. He has said that less difficult schemes have already been dealt with and that in future it will be more difficult to get farmers to make up their minds to proceed. I think that that is quite fair. Professor Ellison makes the point that, while a certain amount has been done which is valuable, much remains still to be done, and that it will be done only if farming is a prosperous industry—provided that the small farmer, the hill farmer, can find the capital, or the wherewithal to pay the interest on the money he will have to lay out to get a hill farming scheme going.
As the Parliamentary Secretary knows full well, these schemes require a 50 per cent. outlay by the farmer himself. He


knows, too, that the average cost of the schemes which have so far been accepted by the Ministry run at just over £3,000 per scheme. That means that the small farmer has to find £1,500.

Mr. Thomas Williams: Or the landowner.

Mr. Champion: Or the landowner, as my right hon. Friend says.
Nevertheless, in so many cases I notice that it is the comparatively small owner-occupier of the farm who has, in fact, to put up these schemes. If that is the case, we must always remember the cost to the small man, the amount he has to lay out every week—because that is what it really means—upon the capital he has put into the scheme.
What are the facts? If it is that these schemes cost over £3,000 each and he has to find £1,500, it means that the farmer has, at the present rate of interest, to find about £2 a week to pay the interest on that money alone, without counting any amortisation for which, of course, he will have to provide because he must pay back the money. That is difficult for a man who is not getting a very good return from his work, from his capital, from his managerial experience.
A recent farm income survey shows that very many of our farmers are receiving less as net income than are the unskilled workers in urban industry. That is not a satisfactory situation at all, and certainly does not encourage a hill farmer to embark upon the hazards of a scheme under the Acts. Some of the difficulties of the hill farmer are directly due to the Government's policies. Their marketing scheme has reduced the price of fatstock and created uncertainty in the minds of feeders. They have unsettled this industry to such an extent that it is bound to have its reflection in the price of store cattle—the price the hill farmer will receive for his beasts.
These are points that require very careful consideration by the Government. Is it possible to ensure in some way that these people can improve their holdings, as they ought to be improved in the interests both of the industry and of the national economy? Is it possible to devise some other credit method which will ensure loans to the farmers at a rate of interest less than the prevailing 5½ per-

cent.? The present rate of interest is prohibitive for the small man and I can well understand why the Parliamentary Secretary says that it takes a lot to get them to make up their minds at this time. It would take a lot to make me make up my mind were I a hill farmer.
We support the Bill and wish it well, but I ask the hon. Gentleman to look sympathetically at these points and to try to find a way by which these people can take advantage of what were excellent schemes, which we gladly see going forward under this extension.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2.—(EXTENSION OF PERIODS FOR PAYMENT OF SUBSIDIES IN RESPECT OF HILL SHEEP AND CATTLE.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Dye: Surely, we must stop here for a minute to consider whether we are to continue with a scheme for subsidising the keeping of breeding cattle on our hill farms when, as is already indicated, we have too many cattle for the country's requirements—we have either too many or too much beef is coming from other sources.
In the well-known farming paper that comes out today, the Farmer and Stockbreeder, I saw under the fatstock prices :
Lower prices for all classes of Livestock; Fat Cattle decline continues, Pig Trade Buoyancy disappears, Lamb prices less steady.
Those of us who do not go to political conferences in the Summer Recess but stay at work on the farms, learned that the Minister of Agriculture had announced that he was to give £10 million more in subsidy for fatstock which have already gone to the market, been killed and eaten. Here we are being asked to continue a system of subsidies to provide more of these cattle. When I and other hon. Members raised this matter on Second Reading the Joint Parliamentary Secretary tried to ride off with an assurance that everything in the agricultural industry was really working out to the common good, that it was all wrong to say that people were losing confidence.
In the light of the present circumstances, would it be right to say to the


hill farmers "You should continue to keep more breeding cattle and sheep on the hills," when we know that the money they receive for those animals as they come off the hills is less than it was a few years ago and cannot possibly cover the cost of production? There is no point in rearing store cattle on the hills if those who purchase them cannot graze, fatten and sell them at a price which will cover all costs.
Surely this point has been emphasised during the last three months. The Parliamentary Secretary should re-read the speech which he made on Second Reading when he was then being urged to extend facilities to dairy farmers on the hills. He said that the Government could not be expected to include milk production on the hills because there was already sufficient milk being produced elsewhere. Here are the very words which he used :
…it must be right when already the milk supply is in excess of the demand of consumers in this country, and through progressive improvement in technique and production, is showing every sign of rising further. It cannot be right to be spending substantial sums of public money in order to assist the milk producers to produce even more."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th July, 1956; Vol. 556, c. 1640.]
If that was a sound argument in relation to the production of milk, is it not equally a sound argument in relation to the production of beef? If the Government have not the means of providing sufficient money to meet the deficiency payments in order to bring up the price of fat cattle to the guaranteed price of 151s. per live cwt., if those who have been producing fat cattle during the whole of this year have been doing so at a loss, why should we continue with a scheme that encourages people to do what is not needed?
I heard a little while ago that the price of Argentine beef has fallen by about 6d. per 1b. on the London market. If we have got this abundance of imported beef, how can we justify the continuance of this form of subsidy which encourages people to produce even more? Surely every kind of subsidy that Parliament grants should be designed to enable an industry to be carried on productively and at a profit. If the cattle-rearing industry continues as it has done this year, we are surely luring people into a trap. We are luring people to do something which at the end of the year they will not find profitable.
Here is a chance for the Government to justify this Clause. If they cannot do so, it ought to be withdrawn from the Bill and should not receive the assent of the Committee. Unless the Government can give a clear indication that the calves which they expect to be reared under this scheme are needed, will be profitable to the rearers and will fetch a price on the market that is satisfactory to the producers, this scheme ought to be discontinued.
4.45 p.m.
I believe that we ought to rear and fatten all the cattle we possibly can, but the producers must receive the right kind of encouragement. It has been indicated that in 1957 there will be a greater import of beef into the country than in 1956, and if this tendency continues I should like to know why we should maintain this system of subsidies for cattle rearing.
Many people who in the past have bought store cattle are not buying them to fatten now. I know of many farmers in Norfolk who, during the past year, have purchased store cattle from various parts of England, Scotland and Wales, but they are not doing it this year because they are not prepared to carry on their business at so great a loss.
I want to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary something different from what he said in his Second Reading speech. He said that the Government would prevent a deluge of imports and prevent things from happening which would lead to a decline of the beef producing industry. When are the Government going to do this? It seems to me that the Government either have no control over the situation or have no information which is really necessary in order to give to the producers of beef cattle sufficient confidence and encouragement to continue with their work. In the present circumstances, many of them will give up.
Why should we continue with this system of subsidies? We do not want to keep people busy on the hills merely for the sake of keeping them busy and to continue pouring out money in support of hill farm legislation. We do not want to pour out money in deficiency payments just for the sake of doing so. We want a sensible arrangement for the production of cattle in this country. If, in order to maintain that state of affairs,


there must be adequate controls over imports, we want to know when those controls are going to be operative. Otherwise this money will be wasted, and people will be wasting their time on the hill farms in conditions which are not pleasant. Nowhere can the feeding of cattle during the winter months be described as a pleasant task, although it is essential.
I am expressing the feeling of the great mass of people connected with rearing and fattening stock in this country when I say that it is foolish to continue with this subsidy and to promise a still larger deficiency payment, when by the proper organisation of this type of farming the country could obtain the beef that it wants in increasing quantities and in improved quality.
If we can build up, from the base, the beef producing industry in this country and in the islands close by, then we can do that, but not on the basis of the present known policy of the Government. I say that this Clause requires far more justification than was indicated in the speech of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary on Second Reading.

Mr. Whitelaw: The hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye), in attempting to speak somewhat against this Clause, has painted a very gloomy picture. He has, of course, left out one half of the story, because it did not happen to suit his case. He has spoken about fat cattle, but not about sheep. I think the hon. Member will agree that the state of the sheep trade at the moment shows that sheep from the hills are very much needed, and that trade is very good just now. The first point is that the subsidies have undoubtedly done a great deal of good. If the hon. Member would come with me to some of the markets in my constituency, he would see that a large number of the sheep coming into those markets come off the hills as a result of these subsidies, and he would also see that there is a very good trade in them. I would say that that completely justifies the use of these subsidies as far as sheep are concerned.
When the hon. Member speaks about fat cattle, I agree that certainly the trade has not been good, but surely the Minister's recent announcement about the extra

money to be given to support the guaranteed price, together with his statement that he was not going to stand idly by and see the beef trade deluged with imports from abroad, shows that the Government are determined to have a flourishing beef trade in this country.
This Clause is a further indication of that determination, and I personally support it without any hesitation. In doing so, I wish to ask a question on one small point of administration of these subsidies in the past. I understand that, in practice, it is found that a particular farm qualifies for the subsidy with a particular number of sheep or cattle, but when that land is improved it is often clear that more sheep or cattle could be kept on it. The subsidy numbers, however, remain as they were before the land was improved. That is the position as I understand it. If I am wrong, I shall be very pleased, but, if I am right, I hope it is possible to do something about it, because encouragement should surely be given to people to improve their land.

Major Sir Duncan McCallum: I feel obliged to say something in reply to what the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) said a few moments ago about the bad condition of our beef farms this year.
I am astonished to hear a Norfolk man say that the feeders of beef cattle are going out of business in his county. I cannot believe that the hon. Member has attended many of the marts in Scotland in the last two months. I have attended many of them, and I have sold beasts at one or two of them. To my astonishment, I found that from as far away as the East Riding of Yorkshire and Norfolk buyers were still coming to buy and were glad to buy. To my great regret, however, they have been getting their cattle considerably cheaper than I would have liked, and I think that the hill farmers who are producing these store cattle feel very sore that they are not receiving as much for them this year as they did last year.
When one compares this year with last year, one realises that prices last year were extreme. The hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West says that this year prices are worse than they have been for many years. Not at all. Prices are slightly worse than last year, but much better than in 1954 and in previous


years. I would try to console the hon. Member today by saying that some of his own people are coming to the North to buy our store cattle, and I hope he will not persuade the Government to stop these subsidies, because they are of great assistance in the rearing of hill cattle.
I want to quote one case of a man who was a neighbour of mine and who was a feeder of store cattle. He was doing very well, and he used to give me excellent advice on the economic way of feeding these cattle. Three years ago he went out of farming, and, when I asked him why, he said, "Well, you see I am getting too old for it. Farming is a business, and I have made a good business out of it, but now I am going because I am too old." He retired to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.
At one of the marts at which I was selling cattle recently, I saw him, and he actually bought some of my calves. I said to him, "I thought you had gone out of the business, because you said farming was a business and it was not worth it now that you were too old for it?" This man evidently thought it was worth it this year to buy calves and store beasts to start to fatten them for the beef trade. Therefore, I hope that my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend the Minister will not listen too much to what the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West said just now, but will still continue to give us these subsidies.
There is one point on which I would support the hon. Member, and I am sure that the Minister will tell us something about it. It is this question of imported Argentine beef. There is no doubt that it is causing grave concern—not so much anxiety as disquiet—among farmers. The statements that have been made in the last week or two by the Minister have helped to calm them a little, but it is true that we should like to have something from the Front Bench tonight to indicate that there will be some means of curbing or controlling the situation so that the importation of Argentine beef—the chilled beef which is so very badly wanted by the housewives of this country, and we have to be rather careful about that—should not be allowed to ruin or even badly to affect the hill farmer who produces the store stock which are to benefit from this Bill.

Mr. Nugent: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Whitelaw) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Argyll (Sir D. McCallum) for putting the eloquent intervention of the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) into slightly more realistic perspective. While I take the point, which is a fair one, when he asks me what is the prospect for beef in present circumstances, when I am asking the Committee to approve this commitment for seven years ahead, I feel that, at any rate in some of his remarks, the hon. Member was drawing the long bow rather long.
To deal with one small point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border about the question of reassessing the numbers of livestock that can be kept on a holding and that can qualify for the subsidy after a scheme has been approved, the answer is that there is no rigid line about it at all. Provided that there is no obvious overstocking, we are quite willing to accept for qualification all the livestock then on the holding, and the hon. Member need have no anxiety on that point.
Turning to the main point raised by the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West, I can reassure him at once that Government policy on beef production is what I discern to be his own wish and hope for such a policy—to encourage the maximum beef production from our own farms, and from these hill farms with which we are particularly concerned today as the basis for breeding stocks. That has been our policy and it continues to be our policy. I accept the point made that due to the volume of imports, there has been disquiet in the minds of farmers as to what the future is likely to be. These circumstances have come about because of the combination of the increased volume of imports with a system for calculating the deficiency payments which has a time lag inherent in it on a falling market. This has resulted in a lower gross return to the farmers on the average than we had intended with the guaranteed price level of 151s. for the year.
5.0 p.m.
I certainly feel bound to make the point to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Argyll that we do need a considerable volume of imported meat in


this country if our housewives are to have enough. We have a considerably increased volume of production from our own farms; we hope and believe that that volume of production will continue to increase, and by all kinds of measures we are helping it. Despite that big increase, however, we still need considerable imports if housewives are to have enough. This is in fact the first year since pre-war days when the combined supply from our own farms and imports has given our housewives the same level of beef consumption as they had in prewar days. None of us, on either side of the Committee, would wish the housewife to have less than that—in other words, supplies are coming in in order to meet current demand.
It is an unfortunate combination of circumstances that, due to the machinery of calculating the deficiency payment, the combination of the market return and the deficiency payment has not brought the average return up to the level which we guaranteed. That is the reason why my right hon. Friend has announced his intention of coming to the House to ask for approval to make a supplementary payment which will bring the average return up to approximately the level that we had guaranteed. If we can devise a better system of calculating the deficiency payment and implementing the guarantees, we shall certainly do so.
I feel the right time to go into this in detail—as I am sure you will quickly remind me, Sir Charles—is when we are bringing the necessary Order before the House, and I must not, therefore, go further now ; but I felt I could not say less than that in order to leave the Committee in no doubt at all that now that we, the Government, are asking the Committee to approve this Clause, which will have effect for another seven years, we do intend to see that beef production is reasonably profitable, we do intend to implement the price guarantee which we have given, and we do intend that these small farmers on the hills shall have a good prospect in the stock rearing in which we are encouraging them.
Indeed, the other measures which we have taken in this connection give further substance to that. On Second Reading, I announced to the House that it was the Government's intention to pay the £10

a year for seven years for the hill cow, which thereby gave long-term continuity for those farmers ; and, as the Committee knows, we have also announced that we intend to make the guarantee payment for next year not less than the current level of 151s., so that for 1957–58 farmers know that they have this prospect ahead of them as well.
There are many aspects of this subject which I should like to develop further, but I feel certain the Committee will not wish me to do so now, and I doubt whether you, Sir Charles, would allow it. I must, therefore, content myself with leaving the matter in general terms. I hope I have said enough to convince the Committee, and, indeed, farmers and the community, that whilst it is the Government's intention to see that we have an adequate meat supply in this country—imports combined with home production—we certainly intend to see that we not only maintain the present level of production from our farms in livestock products, in beef and sheep, but that we also increase it—and continue to increase this form of primary production which we regard as absolutely basic.
I can roundly repeat my right hon. Friend's statement that we do not intend to see our own beef market flooded out by a deluge of imports. It is a difficult matter to keep the balance precisely right, but I hope that I have said enough to ensure that this Measure here—a generous provision for the future—which I am asking the Committee to approve will give to these men that sense of security that we wish them to have in the future.

Mr. Dye: I was very disappointed by the speech of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. I thought he would give us a little more arithmetic. He did say that it was the intention of the Government to continue the £10 a year subsidy for the cows kept on the hills. The cows, of course, usually produce one calf each, and each calf, when reared, qualifies for a subsidy of, I think, £7. That is £17 at the beginning. That is what we are asked to continue.
When the calf reaches a weight of about 10 cwt. live weight, at present it qualifies for a subsidy of about £12 10s. That brings it up to only 128s. per live cwt. To make it up to what the Joint Parliamentary Secretary said he


has now promised for the next year, to 151s., requires another £11 10s. In other words, for each calf reared in the hills which reaches 10 cwt. at slaughter time, the total subsidy is £41, for a beast which is sold on the market at the present time for about £48.
That suggests to me that the people who will be asked to continue to rear calves will say, "How long will the British taxpayer go on paying all that money?". Therefore, I feel that the hon. Gentleman has left the matter in a very unsatisfactory state ; farmers and cattle rearers all over the country will be asking themselves how long the Chancellor of the Exchequer will go on with this subsidy together with the other one and the further one which is promised, which will run at the rate of £41 per head of 10 cwt. when the beasts come to the butcher. The situation will cause them to think very seriously indeed.

Mr. Nugent: May I very briefly reply to the point which has been made? The structure of the subsidies is this : first, £7 10s. for heifer calves and £8 10s. for steer calves ; in addition to that, the rearer on the hills would be getting £10 a cow. The farmer outside, of course, does not get the £10 a cow. The guarantee payments at present are perhaps something of the order of £12 per animal being presented. Therefore, for the farmer in the lowlands, there is a total guarantee payment of something of the order of £20 an animal ; it will go higher as the guarantee payment goes higher, and might go as high as £25. For the man on the hills, if we take into account the £10 per cow, the figure would be £10 higher. That class is receiving the extra £10 payment because of the exceptional conditions on the hills, and I am quite certain that everybody here and, indeed, outside, would think it well justified.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Mr. T. Williams: I ought to tell the House that it is not my intention to detain it for more than a few minutes, but, as the original Hill Farming Act was passed in 1946, was extended in 1951 for five years, and is now to be extended by the present Government for a further seven years, I should like to thank the Government for the compliment that they are now paying the Labour Government when they were in office. This Government have not been half as successful when producing schemes as, apparently, Labour were when they were in office. This scheme will now be continued for a total of seventeen years. As the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has quite truly said, the Government think it right to extend it and are happy to do so. They feel that it makes a great contribution to our agriculture and also, as I know the hon. Gentleman feels, to our national economic situation. We thank the Government for the compliment that they are now paying us.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) has been making some observations about the calls from the Government to the industry from time to time for a larger quantity of this or that, and when the farming community has responded and produced the goods, the Government have failed to make provision to receive, market and to dispose of them in a quite sensible manner.
We had, first, the pig muddle. Also, three times in four years the Government wanted tillage; then they did not want it, were not sure about it, and finally wanted as much of it as they could get, after they had lost about half a million acres of tillage. The Government wanted more beef. Quite properly, we all want to see more beef, and beef of the right quality, too. They started what is now known as the rolling system of payment. [HON. MEMBERS : "Rock and roll."] I do not know how much rock there is in it, but it has definitely been rolling a bit.
While only six or seven months ago the Government guarantee payment was about 5s. per cwt., it is now nearer 25s. per cwt. The Government—I am pleased they are doing it—are having to repair the damage of the very faulty scheme which has been operating over the past fifteen or eighteen months.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West said something about imported Argentine meat. At present, we cannot avoid the importation of some meat; we should be hopelessly short unless we had some. However, it is possible here and there, if the will exists and the policy is right, to exercise some control if only to avoid a disaster within our own industry at home. But we cannot talk about fresh breezes and liberty and freedom—not to mention squeezes—and at the same time have power in our hands to exercise the control that we want to exercise when the situation requires it. That is the unfortunate position of the Government at the moment. I agree with the Joint Parliamentary-Secretary that there will be an opportunity in a few days' time of dealing with this "rock and roll" payment system, and it is not for us to delay matters tonight.
In 1946, thanks to a report from a certain Professor Ellison and another from Lord De La Warr, who both emphasised that our hillsides were part and parcel of our agricultural industry and that we required the maximum use from them if we were to produce the quantity of meat needed in this country, the Hill Farming Act was passed. A great deal of the credit goes to them. We on this side accept no credit. We were just the operators who saw the wisdom of doing the right thing following the right advice. I am pleased that the 1946 Act and the extending Act of 1951 have both proved very valuable, and I am equally happy to know that the Joint Parliamentary-Secretary, despite a certain slow-down, considers that the extension for the further seven years will be a really fruitful investment from a national point of view.
Therefore, not only would we not dream of opposing the Bill, but we give it our hearty support on Third Reading. I hope that nothing will happen, either with sheep or beef cattle, or any other animals, to "upset the applecart" of the Hill Farming and Livestock Rearing Acts.

5.14 p.m.

Mr. Nugent: I thank the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) for the support he has kindly given to the Bill to send it on its way. Indeed, I thank the House for the support that has been given and the interesting debates we have had both today and

on Second Reading. Whatever was the source, the right hon. Gentleman handsomely paid tribute to the De La Warr Committee which, to some extent, he regarded as the source. We are certainly ready to pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman and to his hon. and right hon. colleagues. We are glad to learn from any source. We have had a valuable Measure and we are pleased to carry it on.
I think I have made it plain that, despite whatever doubts the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) or the right hon. Gentleman may have, the primary industrial objective is increased meat production. Despite temporary undulations, that is what we intend to get. We intend to create conditions which will continue to get it, as, indeed, we are getting it now.
Whilst we are ensuring that farmers who go in for these schemes get an increased income, we are vitally concerned, and especially in Wales, to stop rural depopulation. This is a most important Measure from the sociological point of view. The Act has done a good deal already, and I am certain that these Measures will continue to do more in the future. T thank the House for the support it has given and I now ask it to give the Bill a Third Reading.

5.16 p.m.

Mr. Dye: My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) did a great deal in introducing the original Hill Farming Bill and took great interest in its administration while he was at the Ministry, and I realise what a debt the people living in the hills owe to him for all he did in that respect.
I did not in any way intend to oppose this Bill. I do not say that there is anything wrong with it. What are wrong are the other aspects of the Government's agricultural policy, and this part cannot possibly thrive unless the other parts are put right. It is merely puting a lot of the money down the hills if we are to encourage greater production without also a proper scheme, not only of marketing and slaughtering the cattle, but of controlling the imports of beef into this country. The whole must be knit together into a sound agricultural and food importing policy if the country is to have both efficient production and marketing and if the taxpayers are to be saved the enormous expenditure which has been undertaken.
We realise that there is a tremendous expenditure, but it is due to the fact that the people who handle the cattle after they leave the farms and before they get to the housewife via the butchers' shops are getting such enormous profits that there is a lack of confidence because the Government's policy is not complete. It has had a good foundation on which to build from my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, but the Government have failed to complete the building and the policy is incomplete. It is costly to the nation and will eventually, I believe, bring about the downfall of the Government if they do not remedy the defects.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

5.19 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Henderson Stewart): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill is not a major Measure. Its purpose, as the Explanatory Memorandum indicates, is to remove some of the difficulties that have been experienced in the administration and development of education in Scotland since the passing of the 1946 Act. It achieves this, as the House will note, by making a number of amendments to existing law, amendments which have long been sought by the education authorities and the Central Department. The difficulties, as I shall show, have been various, and, although no one of them can be called fundamental, taken together they have throughout the years hampered activities in many directions where we should all like to make progress. So far as I know, none of the proposals is controversial : they have the support of the local authority associations; they were universally welcomed in another place. I hope, therefore, that the Bill may be given a speedy passage through the House.
Its main Clauses deal in a limited way with the safety of pupils, school attendance, bursaries, school transport, and teachers' training. The remaining Clauses are of less importance, and there is a

Schedule of minor amendments. As hon. Members will have gathered, it is, in effect, a miscellaneous provisions Bill. I am sure the House will not expect me to go into all the details or to go over all the provisions at this stage, but it may be helpful if I run over the Clauses dealing with the five subjects which I have mentioned and indicate the kinds of problems which have confronted us and the way we think they should be overcome.

Clause 1 deals with the safety of pupils going to and from school and while actually present at school. Private roads, paths and bridges used by pupils on their daily journeys are sometimes dangerous—no doubt, we can all think of examples—and safety barriers at school entrances leading on to busy highways are often very desirable, but because the land over which the roads pass or on which the barriers should be erected does not belong to the education authority, the authority has no power to do the necessary work. My noble Friend the Minister of State for Scotland, when moving the Second Reading in another place, gave one or two examples. I give just three.

First, the example of a school on a dangerous bend on a main road. A barrier outside the school gates is urgently required. The education authority is willing to share the cost of erecting a barrier with the roads department of the county council, but, as the law now stands, it has no power to do so. That is a difficulty which has emerged. Another example is this, that, in several cases, the lorry bringing the school meals has to cross the school playground and is a danger to the children. That is because the private road leading to the side entrance of the school has become too bad to use, but the education authority is unable to repair it.

Here is another example. A bridge which children cross in going to school from a country area was dangerous and the education authority actually repaired it, but it did so without statutory power, and the accountant took objection. Another bridge on the only road from a village to a school has become dangerous and has been closed to traffic. The school car would normally cross the bridge, but the children are now required to alight, and cross on foot. The education authority wants to put the bridge in good order, but it cannot.

The effect of Clause 1 is to give the authorities, subject to certain conditions, statutory power to undertake repairs and improvements of the kind I have been describing. I am confident that, armed with these new powers, education authorities will undertake many useful and urgent safety operations.

Clause 3 is another example of the need for adjustment in the light of experience. The present law says that the parent of every child between five and fifteen years of age must provide suitable and efficient education for that child either by regular attendance at school or by other means, and, of course, as we all know, that is one of the best observed laws in the land. Truancy, which at times, has been a perplexing problem, is today no longer a serious matter. The great majority of parents are scrupulous about sending their children to school, but there are a few parents, and, no doubt, there always will be, who, for one reason or another, either neglect their duties or prove themselves unable to carry them out and for the sake of the children we must furnish the authorities with effective sanctions. The 1946 Act deals with this matter, but loopholes have appeared which we now want to close.

Clause 3 makes three main changes. First, it enables an education authority, at the same time as it postpones a decision whether to prosecute a parent, to pronounce an attendance order requiring the child to attend a particular school, and it gives the same power to a court dealing with such a prosecution where it does not direct the child to be brought before a juvenile court.

Secondly, the Clause provides that where a child moves from one education area to another and an attendance order is in force, the order may be amended and remain in force. This cuts out the somewhat elaborate procedure, which as many of us know, has now to be followed before a new attendance order can be made. This is just an example of how we are bringing legislation up to date.

The third change enables an education authority to direct a child to be brought before a juvenile court where the authority is satisfied that such a step is

necessary to secure the regular attendance of the child at school. This is irrespective of whether or not the parent is prosecuted.

Clause 4, as hon. Members will have seen, is short and simple, Its object is to make it possible for education authorities to take into account the needs of dependants when assessing bursaries for married men attending courses at universities, central institutions and further education centres. There probably will not be a great many cases of this kind, but we want to encourage all who are desirous and qualified to take advantage of these opportunities.

Clause 5 deals with the transport and travelling expenses for pupils attending schools and other educational establishments. This Clause makes three changes. It enables education authorities to offer any pupil more than one of the three types of travelling facilities described in the Clause, that is to say, conveyance by buses, provision of bicycles, payment of travelling expenses. It may well be that a certain child needs the benefit of two of these provisions.

Secondly, the Clause requires the authorities to allow vacant places in vehicles to be used without charge by pupils for whom in the normal way the authority would not provide transport. This is a matter upon which hon. Members have put Questions to me once or twice. Thirdly, it empowers authorities to meet expenses necessarily incurred by persons—that is, not only pupils, but teachers, for example—required to attend an educational institution for, say, an examination, or an interview before admission. Experience has shown that all these changes are desirable.

Clause 9, dealing with the training of teachers, consolidates and amends Section 77 of the 1946 Act and the amendments already made to it in 1949.

Miss Margaret Herbison: Would the hon. Gentleman say a few words about Clause 7?

Mr. Stewart: I am coming to that, if the hon. Lady will allow me. I was not taking the Clauses strictly in order but taking the important ones first.

Clause 9 is important not so much for what it does immediately as for the possibilities it opens for the future. I think


that hon. and right hon. Members from Scotland know that it is our intention, with I believe general approval, to make new regulations about teacher-training. The existing regulations were framed 25 years ago and I think that it is generally agreed that they no longer quite meet the needs of the times. A memorandum, prepared by the Department on the main points for decision, is now being examined by the interested parties in Scotland, and we shall have a series of conferences on the matter starting in December. The Clause is designed to clear the way for any new regulations which may emerge from these discussions. We shall have ample opportunity in the House to examine such matters when the new regulations are laid.

Mr. John Rankin: Am I to take it that this Clause is definitely bound up with future legislation, of which at the moment we have no knowledge, and that that legislation will be contained in regulations which we can only accept or reject and cannot modify or amend?

Mr. A. Woodburn: The Secretary of State makes regulations but, as far as I can gather, with reference to everything after Clause 9 (2), the awarding of certificates of competency does not seem subject to any future regulations.

Mr. Stewart: The difficulty is that to deal with this matter effectively I should have to take the Bill subsection by subsection, and I was trying not to take up too much time. My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate can deal with the points raised when he replies to the debate and, of course, we have the Committee stage to come. I was trying to offer the House the main reasons for the Clause.
To put the matter in another way, the present regulations dealing with teachers' training are not entirely suitable, as I think everybody agrees. It is in the minds of most people that there should be some changes. What changes? We are now in the process of discussing with various bodies what the changes might be. In due course, no doubt, we shall all arrive at conclusions, by agreement I hope, and then I suppose we shall perhaps have to issue new regulations.
All that the Clause does is to tidy up the present situation, consolidate and clarify the regulation-making power of the Secretary of State and, as the House will see, give the Secretary of State certain powers to make some different or wider regulations. I give the House one example. At present the training colleges are not allowed themselves to issue certificates of competency. It is suggested in the Bill that the Secretary of State should have power—not that he shall do it, but should have the power—to include in any new regulations authority to be given to the training authorities themselves to issue certificates. It is not said that it must be done. The Bill merely gives power to the Secretary of State to do that, and the regulations would come before the House. Does that meet the point?

Mr. Rankin: It seemed to me, listening to the hon. Gentleman skating so nicely through the Bill, that there were one or two subsections which might have borne a moment or two's reference. For instance, there is Clause 9 (2). I feel that in fairness to the House the hon. Gentleman might have said a word or two about the very comprehensive powers that are contained in Clause 9 (2).

Mr. William Ross: The Joint Under-Secretary of State has made heavy weather of this business of a change, but if my reading of the position is correct the power provided in Clause 9 (2) already exists. Therefore, would the hon. Gentleman explain just exactly what the differences are and not give us just an example, as he has been giving quite helpfully, but tell us what the Clause does and just how it changes the powers of the Secretary of State?

Mr. Stewart: I am at the service of the House gladly to do that. Clause 9 (1) distinguishes the two types of awards which the Secretary of State can make. He may award

(a) certificates of competency to teach in schools or other educational establishments, and
(b) documents recognising persons as competent to fulfil the duties of leaders in service in connection with organised cultural, social and physical training and other leisure-time occupation.

Subsection (2) empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations constituting the training authorities and conferring powers upon them.

Mr. Ross: That is all very well. We can read. We know all that, but will the hon. Gentleman tell the House where that is new?

Mr. Stewart: If the House wants this, we shall have to go back to the Education (Scotland) Act, 1946, and read Sections from it. I am quite willing to do that if the House wants me to do so, but I should have thought, with respect, that that was a Committee point. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) is quite right. Roughly speaking, Clause 9 (2) is in the 1946 Act, but he will see that we are asking that for Section 77 of the principal Act there shall be substituted the Section embodied in the Bill. This does not abolish what was in the previous Act. It brings it up to date. It simplifies the procedure and gives the Secretary of State rather wider regulation-making powers. If hon. Members have individual points we shall, of course, be most ready to answer them.

Miss Herbison: It does not seem to me that the hon. Gentleman's explanation is good enough for the House. I have gone very carefully over Section 77 of the 1946 Act and over Clause 9 of the present Bill. The note I made after my comparison was, "What differences are there, if any, in the powers which the Secretary of State will have under Clause 9?" If there are to be important differences in the powers which the right hon. Gentleman will have in issuing certificates, it is incumbent upon the Joint Under-Secretary of State to tell the House at this stage exactly what Clause 9 gives to the Secretary of State which he does not already possess under Section 77 of the 1946 Act.

Mr. Stewart: The hon. Lady is making a fair point, and, as I said, one would have to go through the Act line by line. If I may try to answer the House in the following way it may, I think, give the answer that is wanted.
The purpose of this Clause is to consolidate Section 77 of the 1946 Act and the amendments made to it. It also makes some further Amendments to that Act which I will give to the House. First there are the Amendments to improve the form of the Section of the principal Act and to clarify the scope of the regulation-making power of the Secretary of State. Secondly, these amendments are intended to enable the

regulations to be brought up to date as regards, first, the provision of education courses for students as well as courses of professional training, next the provision of short courses and conferences for teachers and others, and, finally, cooperation with education authorities and others providing or organising such courses.
The third group of amendments is intended to enable the Secretary of State to delegate to the training authorities power to award teachers' certificates.

Mr. E. G. Willis: That means that there is an additional power. We are trying to find out what additional powers the Government are asking for, and I gather that they are contained in this series of amendments?

Mr. Stewart: No.

Mr. Willis: Well, the others are not additional.

Mr. Stewart: They are. The three sets of amendments to which I have referred improve the form and also enable regulations to be brought up to date. They are changes for the better. I am not saying that they are important changes but they are necessary administratively. Then there is the third change which may enable the Secretary of State, if it is thought wise, to give the training colleges power to issue their own certificates.

Mr. Woodburn: I apologise for interrupting again but I am trying to follow this Bill in comparison with the existing Act of Parliament. It is true that subsection (2) of Section 77 of the existing Act has been brought forward as subsection (1) of Clause 9 of this Bill, but what the House would like to know is why that wording is being altered. The explanation given by the hon. Gentleman does not seem to fit in with the change in wording as between the two Measures. The hon. Gentleman might clear this up for those who have not been able to study the Bill with the assistance at his disposal. We understand the authorisation to give certificates, but what are the other differences?

Mr. Stewart: I am anxious to meet the wishes of the House, and especially of the right hon. Gentleman, but short of giving the House a word by word comparison of the old subsection and the new, I cannot do more than I have done. I have told


the House that this Clause consolidates Section 77 of the 1946 Act with subsequent amendments, and it makes three sets of further amendments which I have described. If hon. Members still feel that a detailed explanation is required that will be provided but, with respect, I suggest that it is a Committee point. In any case my right hon. and learned Friend will do his best to answer any points raised by hon. Members when he replies to the debate.
I was about to say that in due course we shall have ample opportunity to examine all these matters, whatever new regulations may arise from the conferences. In the meantime, all that my right hon. Friend seeks to do is to make it possible for him to break new ground as and when a clear picture has been formed of the changes that ought to be made.
These are the main provisions of the Bill. Now I will deal with the minor provisions, beginning with Clause 2. Section 7 of the 1946 Act requires the education authorities to exercise their function of providing further education in accordance with schemes submitted to, and approved by, the Secretary of State. By "scheme," I mean a document setting out in detail what the authorities undertake to do in discharge of their duties.
As I am sure the hon. Lady and the right hon. Gentleman will recollect, for ten years attempts have been made, with the co-operation of the authorities, to devise a satisfactory form of scheme for this branch of further education which would have some degree of stability and permanence. We have all tried hard, but without much success. The difficulty is that there is no compulsion on anybody to undertake further education, and the situation—for example, in relation to evening classes and to social and recreational work—has always been so fluid that schemes have become out of date almost as soon as they have been approved.

Clause 2 recognises these facts and removes the requirement of formal—I stress the word "formal"—schemes for the provision of voluntary further education. This does not mean that the Secretary of State will not know what is going on. On the contrary, he will get all he requires by less formal methods, and a great deal of time and labour will be saved, particularly in the offices of the education

authorities. That is always worth doing. Clause 8—

Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman has dealt with paragraph (a). What about paragraphs (b) and (c)?

Mr. Stewart: Would the hon. Gentleman care to ask me in detail what he wants to know?

Mr. Ross: Paragraph (b) deals with social, physical and recreational facilities which may be dealt with by the local education authority as part of the school work, not adult education.

Mr. Stewart: That is a fair point but, with respect, it is a Committee point. It has not been easy to draft this Bill. The draftsmen have had to take account of the various incidents and developments which have occurred in the last ten years or so, and they have had to find words which will bring the Measures up to date and which will short-circuit procedure. Some of the provisions of the earlier Act. have been repealed and new provisions have been introduced. Short of going through the Bill item by item, I am bound to meet the criticism of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) when he asks, what does subsection so and so mean? I can only ask him to be so kind as to let us deal with these detailed matters during the Committee stage.

Mr. Rankin: Will the hon. Gentleman remember that, so far as we know at the moment, there is to be only one day for the Committee stage?

Mr. Stewart: If I might pass to Clause—

Miss Herbison: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is proposng to leave Clause 2. He has attempted to give us some indication of what paragraph (b) means, but there is another paragraph which we believe to be of considerable importance and yet we have no idea what the provision means. The provision is :
(c) special educational treatment other than in special schools.
Where is the special educational treatment taking place if it is not in special schools? We must know this in order to discuss the subject.

Mr. Stewart: I am very glad to answer the hon. Lady on that point. Section 1 (4) of the Act provides that children


suffering from disability of mind or body are to be given special educational treatment. This treatment is to be given in "special schools," an expression which includes special classes in ordinary schools, child guidance clinics and occupational centres approved by the Secretary of State for the purpose, and by other means so approved. I believe that meets the hon. Lady's point.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): Order. So far as I am able to judge, the debate so far sounds not like the Second Reading of a Bill, but more like a Committee stage.

Mr. Stewart: It might clear the point, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I added that, with regard to special educational treatment, it is not possible to define in advance the type of treatment to be given in a few unusual cases which are not suitable for treatment in special schools. As the hon. Lady again has a detailed question, the Committee stage would probably be the appropriate occasion to deal with it.

Mr. Rankin: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. We have listened to the Minister expounding a Bill and continually referring to the fact that this, that and the other thing may be raised during the Committee stage, although the Committee stage will last one day and not a week. In face of that, what defence has the Opposition on Second Reading? It has obviously been assumed that this is a minor Bill which went through on the nod in another place and that that will happen here, and in that situation we are placed at a disadvantage by the fact that the Minister is not at the moment dealing adequately with the Measure.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The Opposition are resourceful enough to look after their own interests. My only concern is that a Second Reading debate does not develop into a Committee stage.

Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Surely the House is entitled to have a general Second Reading exposition of the Bill not going into intricate details and not being subjected to interruption?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is what I was trying to say.

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: I accept what you say, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Might I finish my intervention by adding that there will, will there not, be a reply to the Second Reading debate and that will provide an opportunity for the Government to give an answer to many of the points which are now being raised? Ought not the Minister to be allowed to start this debate in the normal fashion?

Mr. Woodburn: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I support the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Sir W. Anstruther-Gray) that we should have an exposition of what is in the Bill. That is exactly the point that my hon. Friends have been trying to convey to the Minister. In view of its references to the Act, it is a complicated Bill. Obviously, the Minister is the expert who can tell us exactly what is meant by the Bill. It cannot be a very intelligible debate later on if the Minister has not explained what the Bill does. A great deal of time may be wasted later on by irrelevant discussion if the Minister does not make points clear now. It will save time if we can be told now exactly what the Bill will do.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It is not for me to deal with the mysteries of the Bill, but it is a matter for me to ensure, so far as I can, with the assistance of the House, that the Second Reading debate does not develop into a Committee stage.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Might I draw your attention to the fact that the Bill enjoys the peculiarity of not having an interpretation or definition Clause, and that the points which have been raised—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order.

Mr. Hughes: Surely I may finish. Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman must know that that cannot be a point of order for me.

Mr. Hughes: Might I draw your attention to the fact, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that the Bill enjoys the peculiarity of not having an interpretation or definition Clause? With the greatest respect, I suggest that I am entitled very briefly to address you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, upon


this matter and to draw your attention to the fact that this is a peculiar Bill and that the points which have been raised relate to the definition of terms of art in the Bill.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. and learned Member is now repeating what I have said is not a point of order. Mr. Henderson Stewart.

Mr. Stewart: rose—

Mr. Hughes: Might I draw the attention of the Joint Under-Secretary to the fact that he has the Lord Advocate beside him to advise him on this matter? The Bill enjoys the peculiarity of not having—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order.

Mr. Hughes: Mr. Deputy-Speaker, are you being fair to me?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. and learned Gentleman must resume his seat when I rise. He is now repeating by way of an intervention what he has just put to me as a point of order. It really has nothing to do with the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: Is it not likely, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that the matter which my hon. and learned Friend has raised with you, while not a point of order for you, is a point which he could properly put to the Minister in his Second Reading speech? I thought he was endeavouring to do that.

Mr. Hughes: As the Minister courteously gave way, perhaps I might put the point to him. I would draw his attention to the fact that the questions which have been addressed to him relate to the definition of two terms of art in Clause 2, "special educational treatment" and "special schools." Inasmuch as there is no interpretation Clause in the Bill—this is an appeal to the Minister ; I am not trying to obstruct—does not the Minister think it is his duty to explain to the House on Second Reading what the terms mean?

Mr. Stewart: That is a fair point. I am not able to answer that technical, legal point at the moment, but we will try to give the hon. and learned Member an answer later this evening.
Clause 6, dealing with dental treatment, makes no change in the law. All it does is to bring into the Scottish Education Acts a Scottish Clause similar to the Clause included in the English Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1953. It was agreed that this should be done at the first suitable opportunity, and we now do it because this is the first opportunity.
Clause 7 discontinues the right of managers of schools to apply for inspection on payment of the expenses involved. There is a little interesting history here. It is, like Clause 2, a recognition of modern facts. Under the Education (Scotland) Act, 1878, school boards could apply for inspection of "higher class schools," as they were called, and they were inspected free of charge. Other managers of such schools could also apply, but they had to pay for the privilege.
The Education (Scotland) Act, 1946, makes all schools subject to inspection without charge, and, in fact, all schools are now periodically inspected. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult, as I am sure hon. Members will appreciate, to arrange for special inspections at the request of managers without taking Her Majesty's inspectors of schools from other and even more important work. Accordingly, it is now proposed to discontinue the practice. That does not mean that no special inspections will be made in the future, but only that they will no longer take place automatically at the request of managers.
I now come to Clause 8. Under the 1946 Act the Secretary of State appoints an Accountant to examine and report on the accounts of educational authorities and other educational bodies. The office of Accountant was created by the Education (Scotland) Act, 1872. Again we are going back into history. Clause 8 brings up to date the requirements about the bodies whose accounts are to be examined and the information to be included in the Accountant's reports. These reports will be laid before Parliament.
Clause 10 is designed to simplify procedure by enabling the Secretary of State to amend or revoke the Teachers Superannuation Scheme by means of regulations rather than, as now, by new or amended schemes which require approval by Order in Council. We can all agree


that the present procedure is not in accordance with modern Parliamentary practice. The change will not, of course, in any way effect the present or future content of the schemes. The regulations, like the present schemes, will be laid before Parliament and will be subject to annulment.
The only other Clauses to which I need refer are two dealing with educational endowments. Here, as hon. Members have no doubt observed, the changes proposed are purely administrative. Clause 11 is designed to bring the system of keeping audit and publication of accounts up to date. It also abolishes the charging of fees for the examination of endowment accounts by the Accountant. These fees are small, but the governing bodies have for long felt that it was unjust that endowment funds should have to bear this charge. The Clause also defines the powers of the Accountant where in his opinion the governing body has been in default, or done something which it has no power to do. The House will be glad to know that there are very few cases of such default. The Accountant will no longer have to report defaults of a minor character to the Secretary of State.
Clause 12 is purely procedural and is intended to modernise the machinery of appeal to the Court of Session on questions of law where a governing body or a person with a vested interest thinks that a scheme for an endowment does not conform to the requirements of the 1946 Act. The proposed change in no way affects the right to appeal, or the grounds upon which an appeal may be taken.
As I indicated at the beginning, we are here concerned not with any large or single new policy, but rather with a series of small amendments to the present law which the march of time has shown to be necessary. Indeed, the Bill is concerned in so many respects with legal difficulties that we thought it proper for the convenience of the House that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate should reply to the debate. I hope that will be for the convenience of the House. Meanwhile, I conclude by saying that if the amendments are accepted, they will substantially improve and speed up the administration of what may well be regarded as the nation's most

important social service, and I therefore claim for these amendments the ready support of the House.

6.5 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison: This evening we are debating the Second Reading of a Bill which has been on the Order Paper for almost the whole Session. At present we have seven Ministers at the Scottish Office, with the Secretary of State a member of the Cabinet. We on this side of the House are entitled to ask at this stage what the Secretary of State and indeed the seven Ministers have been doing during the whole of the Session to safeguard the educational interests of Scotland.
Not so very long ago these Ministers made the most fulsome promises to the Scottish people. We all remember, "More time for Scottish affairs ; Scottish affairs to be more fully in the hands of Scottish Members." Scottish Ministers have been so weak during the whole Session that they have been unable to get adequate time from their English colleagues to discuss what at least we on this side of the House consider to be an important educational Measure.
There was almost a gentlemen's agreement that since the Scottish Ministers were unable to get adequate time for the discussion of the Bill, it should not be taken this Session. Instead of that obtaining, at this preposterously late date in the Session we have the Bill thrown to the Opposition. That is shocking treatment of an Opposition which in educational matters has tried to be responsible. We have not far to seek for the reason. For a considerable time we have known that Scottish Members have been proving a headache to the Secretary of State.
There has been a revolt among Scottish Tory Members. They have rebelled against spending so many mornings in the Scottish Grand Committee. This was a Bill admirably suited to the Scottish Grand Committee, admirably suited to have its Second Reading there, admirably suited to have its Committee stage taken there. Had that happened Scottish Members would have had a chance adequately and thoroughly to examine the provisions of the Bill, but because Scottish Tory Members are in revolt, because they have so many business interests outside the House, we find ourselves asked to discuss the Bill only


a few days before the end of the Session. I know that the Scottish people will see this as another clear example of Scottish Tory Members putting the affairs of Scotland a poor second to their own private business interests.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker seemed to think that there were too many interruptions from this side of the House. All that was being asked was an explanation of what we considered might be important provisions. We did not know whether they were important, and it was also evident that the Joint Under-Secretary had not been properly briefed on the Bill's provisions. If the Joint Under-Secretary is not properly briefed, how can we, without the help of the Civil Service, really know what are the new provisions of the Bill, what they mean and how they compare with those of the Act of 1946? If we wish to subscribe to educational interests in Scotland, it is the duty of the Joint Under-Secretary at least to know where the differences are in this Bill, and to have ready an explanation. They are not Committee points : they are the sole reason for this Bill. I consider that many of us are as wise now as when the Joint Under-Secretary commenced to speak.
I wish to refer to some of the provisions in the Bill and to ask some questions about them. I consider that the provisions in Clause 1 are good. Anything which contributes to increasing the safety of children is something which should command support from all the country, but I wish to ask the Secretary of State about one provision, and I hope I shall not be told that it is a Committee point.
Clause 1 (2) states :
Any work for the purpose of the last foregoing subsection may be undertaken by the education authority in co-operation with any other person.
That does not mean "any other body," it is "any other person." Does that mean that if at this moment there is what we call in Scotland a private road going past houses which are owner-occupied, there will have to be discussions with the owners of that property? Will there be no such road made unless the owner-occupiers are willing to pay their share of the cost? I know of some cases where owner-occupiers would not be able to pay any part of the cost of such a road. Will the provision of a road of this kind be

held up, if that be the case? I should like an answer from the Lord Advocate, and I hope that we shall be given an assurance that there will not be long discussions and squabbling about who is to pay for such a road and what share may have to be borne by such owner-occupiers.
The Joint Under-Secretary explained that three amendments were introduced in Clause 3 (5). We would all wish to see truancy eliminated, if that be possible. Indeed, the Joint Under-Secretary said that truancy is no longer a serious matter. I consider that the first two amendments go to indicate the objection to the third amendment which is proposed in this Clause. My objection to it is strengthened by what was said by the Joint Under-Secretary—that truancy is no longer a serious matter. What does that amendment mean?
From Clause 3 (5) we have to refer to Section 38 of the Principal Act of 1946. Under that Act, before a child can be forced to appear at a juvenile court, the parents must have had to appear before a court. Then, whether or not a conviction had been registered, it can be ordered that the child should appear before a juvenile court. Under the amendment contained in this Bill, a parent can be asked to bring his child to a juvenile court before the parent himself has had to appear before a court, and I think that is a bad thing. Wherever possible children should be kept out of court. I know that juvenile courts are much better than other courts, but it is a bad thing to bring a child before a court, if the fault can be remedied in any other way. From what the Joint Under-Secretary has said, it seems to me that there is no need whatever for the extra provision asked for in this Bill by the Secretary of State. [HON. MEMBERS : "Hear, hear."] I note that my hon. Friends agree with me, and I expect that we shall put down an Amendment to do away with that provision.
I now turn to Clause 4. The Joint Under-Secretary suggested that this was not a very important Bill ; that it has been brought forward to amend the principal Act, because certain anomalies had arisen and certain bodies wished certain things to be done. But this House has two sides ; there is the Government side and the Opposition side. We who are


Members of the Opposition are very interested in education, and when a Bill like this is brought before us, it gives us an opportunity to try to get changes made and to introduce Amendments which it is apparent have become necessary during the years following the passing of the principal Act. Because of the scurvy treatment to which we have been subjected regarding the time allocated for discussing this Bill, it will be almost impossible for the Members of the Opposition to do their duty in that respect. Clause 4 provides an example of that.
I welcome the new provision contained in that Clause. It seems to me to be in line with the schemes which were applied to ex-Service men and women to give them a chance to benefit from the very highest forms of learning, and also to be in line with the scheme for bursaries and grants given to those attracted under the special recruitment scheme for teaching. Anything which helps to increase the educated and trained manpower of our country is a good thing. It was suggested that this provision might not touch many people, but I hope that it will bring many people into the spheres of learning into which we hope to lead them. I hope that in this instance the Secretary of State and the local authorities will find it necessary to spend a far greater sum of money than the Joint Under-Secretary seemed to imagine would be the case.
But this is a Clause in which I feel that we should like to make some Amendments. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) wishes that these or similar provisions should cover other people. There is there one set of children who I feel should come under any new grant provisions, namely, children who are in special schools because of physical or of mental disability. By statutory provision such children must stay at school until they are 16 years of age, whereas other children stay until they are 15. A child taking secondary education after the age of 15 may get a maintenance grant. So far as I am aware, a child forced to stay at a special school until the age of 16 gets no maintenance grant. The provisions for such children under National Assistance legislation operate only when the child has reached the age of 16, so that there is a gap of a year—from 15 to 16—for those

children. That is something about which we hope as an Opposition to be able to do something.
In Clause 5 we have, in the main, the provisions of the principal Act. It has always seemed to me foolish that a local authority, should, for example, provide a bus for children and that there should be vacant seats in the vehicle, when children in rural areas are having to walk to school. I think it a good provision that every seat in such a bus shall be taken, if there are children to fill them. I am not sure about subsection (3), by which it is proposed to pay the expenses of those who have to travel to a centre to attend an examination. That provision about pupils going from one school to another should not be permissive but compulsory. Any pupil travelling for an examination should have travelling expenses covered.
Clause 6 gives us nothing new but merely transfers a Section from one Measure to another. Here was a chance for the Opposition. Many of us on this side of the House are far from satisfied with the provisions relating to the examination of eyes in our schools. Putting in a Clause dealing with dental care of children was an opportunity to ensure also that eyes are taken much more care of than is the case at present. That is another example of the right of the Opposition to demand much more time for the Bill, either by having had it considered earlier in the Session, or by postponing the Bill until the next Session.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State did not give us a proper explanation of Clause 7. He said it merely deleted a Section from the principal Act, but it does something more, something which is important. The provisions of the 1946 Act relating to private schools—as we call them in Scotland—have not been fully operated. We had to wait for an appointed day. In 1951, the decision was taken by the then Labour Secretary of State for Scotland that those provisions should come into effect, and that, without waiting for the managers of private schools to ask for the schools to be inspected, the inspectorate in Scotland should have the right to go into those schools, as they have the right to go into local authority schools. That was a most important provision. When the Tory


Secretary of State for Scotland came to power in 1951, he reversed that decision. We have had to wait all these years to get a proper examination of Scottish private schools. If that is not the case, I should like to know when the provision actually came into operation.
When he made his opening speech the Joint Under-Secretary of State was in a most difficult position, because he knew how short the time will be for discussing the Bill. Yet time and time again he said, "This is a Committee point which we shall have time to discuss in Committee". How can we possibly have time to discuss in Committee all the points that have been raised in this one-day debate? I ask the Joint Under-Secretary to discuss this point with the Secretary of State, and then let the Secretary of State be bold enough to go to the Cabinet and say, "We are not continuing with the Bill this Session". Let him keep it for next Session, so that it can be discussed adequately in the Scottish Standing Committee, although I know that he will have to obtain the sanction of his business friends on the Government back benches.

6.24 p.m.

Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray: The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) would appear to be intent upon delaying the passage of the Bill. If the Bill were referred to the Scottish Standing Committee it could not become law before the end of the Session. [An HON. MEMBER : "Hear, hear."] This is a useful little Measure and I want to see it on the Statute Book without delay. I do not go further than the Joint Under-Secretary of State went in drawing attention to the purpose of the Bill, which is stated in the first two lines of the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum in these words :
The purpose of this Bill is to remove some of the difficulties which have been experienced in the administration and development of public education in Scotland.
I am prepared to admit that a large proportion of the population of Scotland is unaware that these difficulties exist, but it is true that those who are in close touch with the administration of education are aware of the difficulties, are frustrated by them and are anxious to see them removed as soon as possible.

Mr. T. Fraser: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that we, too, were so anxious to get on with the Bill that we wanted it to go to the Scottish Standing Committee many months ago and that it was he and his hon. Friends who stood in the way?

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: I very frequently find myself attending the Scottish Standing Committee in one capacity or another.
It is within my recollection that we spent a great many days discussing at great length a number of Scottish Bills. For that reason a limit has to be put to the number of Bills that can be considered there. Provided that we can get this Measure on the Statute Book there is not much cause for Scottish Members to complain. [HON. MEMBERS : "Oh."] The suggestion that Scottish affairs are not receiving sufficient attention from the House of Commons is falsified by the fact that so much of today is occupied with Scottish business, that a whole day, as I understand, is to be occupied next week on the Committee stage, and after that there will be a portion of another day for the Third Reading of the Bill. If we have all that out of the very small remaining period at the end of the Session we are not doing badly at all.

Mr. Hector Hughes: rose—

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: I am sure that the House would like to get on with discussion of the provisions of the Bill. Although these have been made light of in some quarters, they are very good.

Clause 1 is designed to help children who are travelling to and from school and to obviate the dangers of children running into vehicles which drive on to the playground delivering meals because the road at the side entrance to the school has not been repaired sufficiently to carry the vehicle. The law has not allowed an education authority to incur such an expense. It seems well worth while making it possible for an education authority to do so. I listened to the Joint Under Secretary of State's explanation about bridges, side roads and pathways that require a small repair. That must be very necessary.

I would ask my hon. Friend to clear up one point. It is evident that private roads and pathways can be maintained under the Bill, but is there provision for making


a new path or footbridge? There are cases where a new housing estate has grown up and where there may be a short cut across a field or two to the school. This would allow children to reach the school without running the hazard of the public roads. I would ask my hon. Friend or the Lord Advocate to make it clear that the Bill covers the construction of a new path or footbridge in such a case.

Before I leave the question of safety I wish to refer to the provision of railings outside exits from schools. Hitherto, the education authorities have not been able to bear any expense for that provision, but now they are to be made eligible and to have the onus of initiating the installation of such barriers where they are required. Experience of traffic accidents in the last few years has shown, I think, that railings are a very considerable advantage in preventing children from being run over when they run out into the road unawares.

I turn to another Clause which I think is helpful. That is Clause 4 which makes it clear that scholarships and bursaries won by people over school age may carry with them a certain increment towards the maintenance of the dependants of those people. I imagine that "dependants" include not only the wife and, possibly, family of a grown working man who wants to avail himself of such a bursary, but also the aged dependants—widowed or otherwise—of such a man who may have been dependent for their smaller comforts on that man continuing in gainful occupation.

I am sure that that is something we are all glad to see introduced, the more so as I believe I am correct in saying that a similar provision has already been made in England. In this small respect we have been lagging behind England and should remedy that without delay.

On the question of transport, in particular, I like the subsection which requires local authorities to select children to fill vacant places in school buses. At present, that is permissive and it is to be made a requirement.

Mr. Rankin: How?

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: The hon. Member asks how local authorities will make the selection. I will give a simple case in which an authority would be in

no doubt about how to make a selection. If two children from the same family were going to school and one was older than the other it would seem nonsense that the older one should not be able to accompany the younger all the way to the school. Now an opportunity will be provided for that to be done.

Mr. Rankin: On the morning that the older child is told he may accompany the younger one every seat in the bus may be already taken. What is he to do? Is he to have standing room in the bus?

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: The hon. Member puts administrative points from a background of considerable knowledge. I agree that such decisions will require to be taken by local authorities. It is a fact that a number of local authorities have already accepted the onus of taking those decisions. I have no doubt whatever that other local authorities in Scotland will find that this provision will enable them to do likewise.
The last point to which I refer was touched on by the hon. Lady the present Member for Lanarkshire, North. She referred to dental treatment and said she would like added to that some provision to help in testing eyesight. It may well be that the hon. Lady has made a good point there. The reference in the present Bill to dental treatment is little more than a formality, because it is already the law that free dental treatment may be provided. That is good sense. If one wants to use the proverb
A stitch in time saves nine
there is nowhere where a stitch in time saves nine more effectively than in the treatment of young persons' teeth. The same may easily apply to the care of the eyes and I am happy that that point has been made. I am sure that the Government will give it the consideration it deserves.
With those words, I welcome this small Bill.

6.35 p.m.

Mr. William Ross: When I first read this Bill and the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, I felt that here was a really world-shaking event in the matter of legislation. It states :
The purpose of this Bill is to remove some of the difficulties which have been experienced in the administration and development of public education in Scotland,


I noticed that everyone who has referred to the Explanatory Memorandum, including the Joint Under-Secretary in his scintillating performance this afternoon, omitted :
This Bill is to remove some of the difficulties which have been experienced in the administration and development of public education in Scotland.
I thought it quite wise to make omission of that reference because in the Bill—certainly in the Bill as explained by the hon. Gentleman—I cannot see how the development of public education is going to be assisted in any way.
I had hoped that here we would get something really worth while, because anyone who has been paying any attention at all to the administration of education and the worries of administrators through our sad failure properly to develop education following the high hopes and bold plans laid down during and after the war would be very much concerned about how they were to be helped. All that is left to us to hope for is that the winding-up speech might be made by the latest acquisition to education, the Rector of Glasgow University. We might get a little more clarity from him than from anyone who so far has tried to speak from the benches opposite.
I have been very disappointed indeed even in the explanation of what good there is in the Bill. Administrators in Scotland are terribly worried. They just do not know what to do next in the way of getting on with the administration and development of education. There is the question of the shortage of teachers and of keeping them once they are obtained, and also of putting them in the right places. There is nothing in this Bill which will help in that problem.
We have been talking about safety of children coming from the schools. In my constituency, when a new school was built provision was made in the foundations for the building of a gymnasium, but it still has no gymnasium, because of the credit squeeze. The children there have to cross a public road to go to a hall for physical training. They may breathe again for they get the consolation in this Bill. They should remember that when hon. Members opposite took their place in St. Andrew's House, we were told that new breezes would be blowing there, but every month there is a credit squeeze—I call it

a discreditable squeeze when it affects the children of Scotland. I sometimes wonder whether it is worth while, because we are told that all this important stuff which we have been told about today will not cost anything. What is going to be done if it is going to cost nothing?
The final Clause in the Bill is the clearest one of the lot. It says :
Nothing in this Act shall impose any charge on the people or on public funds, or vary the amount or incidence of or otherwise alter any such charge in any manner, or affect the assessment, levying, administration or application of any money raised by any such charge.
It is not going to cost anything. So the Government are going to build these safety barriers and make other changes—and there are some considerable changes which have not been referred to which will cost somebody some money—but they will not cost the Government anything.

Mr. Willis: That is to be withdrawn.

Mr. Ross: We have been told that this will cost us very little, and we have also been told that the appropriation in aid will suffer by the loss of £1,000 from the fees which come from the inspection of schools. The actual fact is that, in terms of financing, Scottish education does not amount to very much any way, because Scottish education often is determined as a proportion of what the English and Welsh get, and what we get we have to spend on whatever purposes are laid down. So we get nothing exceptional for having passed this legislation.
Let us look at the first point—the question of the safety of children going to and from school. I was really appalled when the Joint Under-Secretary of State told us today that there was a school in a dangerous area where the education authorities could not put up a barrier because the ground was owned by the local authority and not by the local education authority. I am really appalled that that is happening at all in Scotland—that authorities which are tantamount to the same authority, different departments of the one authority, should be told that they connot build a school barrier. I hope that he can give us a better example than that. I have not the slightest doubt that it is regrettable that the Government have never found it in their power to prevent


something like that happening in Scotland hitherto. I think it is desirable that this work should be done.

The question of improving private roads we had under another Bill in the Scottish Grand Committee, and we spent a little time on it. I thought that Bill might be used to get round this difficulty. Perhaps we might know who is to bear the cost of this. Is 100 per cent. cost to be borne by the local education authority or has it to be shared? Obviously, according to the Clause, there has to be the consent of someone whose ground has to be obtained before the work can be carried out for the improvement of a road. The question which arises is how the cost is to be shared if this is a private road. The words "whole or part" which we come across in other parts of the Bill are quite important here, but they are not included in Clause 2. I was surprised that the Joint Under-Secretary should have omitted the discussion of it in the five important Clauses which he singled out. When he eventually came back to it he obviously did not know anything about it.

Mr. Willis: My hon. Friend was not surprised about that, was he?

Mr. Ross: I thought that the Joint Under-Secretary might have learned after six years. His performance today was appalling. I am certain that he had a very good brief and that he had not taken the trouble to read it. This might have considerable implications.
What has happened under Clause 2? Hitherto certain duties have been placed on local authorities. That has been followed up by a further provision as to how they are to carry out those duties, and it has generally been in respect of different aspects of education by the preparation of a scheme which has to be prepared by the education authority and submitted for approval by the Department. Now we have specific instructions to every local authority in Scotland that they do not require to prepare and submit schemes in respect of certain things, and the first one is in respect of part-time and full-time voluntary education.
The excuse given by the Joint Under-Secretary was that local authorities had always found it difficult to prepare such schemes. There never has been any

difficulty about that hitherto ; that has never impeded the development of Scottish education. What is done here is that he has removed from them the duty to prepare schemes and, by removing the duty to prepare schemes, he lowers or reduces the emphasis placed upon this particular aspect of education.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: No.

Mr. Ross: It is a pity that the Joint Under-Secretary has not been able to stand at that Box and tell us something about this Clause instead of listening to someone else explaining it and then saying "No, No." That is exactly what this Clause does. It removes the duty of preparing—does the Joint Under-Secretary deny that this is the effect of the Clause?

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I do ; it is quite wrong.

Mr. Ross: This Clause removes the duty to prepare and submit to the Secretary of State a scheme. Am I right or wrong in that respect?

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I do not know why the hon. Member should deliberately get this thing muddled up. It is as clear as can be. For this particular branch of education, for the reasons which I have given, it has not in practice been found possible either for the authorities or ourselves acting together with the authorities to draw up a normal, formal scheme, such as we have with the primary and secondary, because people come and go and are not obliged to take further education. So we have removed from the authorities that formal duty ; but they have to go on with the job, and we are pressing them as hard as it is within our power to do to advance this work. It is merely the removal of the duty of producing a formal written document ; that is all.

Mr. Ross: It took the Joint Under-Secretary about two and a half minutes to say that the answer to my question was "Yes," and that I was right. In his answer, he referred to the question of a grant to further education—that it cannot be done in the same way as it is possible to do in primary and secondary education. This does not refer only to further education. I asked the Joint Under-Secretary during his speech to explain what subsections (b) and (c) meant, and


he could not. Subsection (b) refers to social, physical and recreational facilities organised in primary and in junior secondary and senior secondary schools. Surely there is no difficulty to produce these formal schemes in respect of activities which many people consider of considerable importance, so his answer in respect of adult education cannot be the same as in this case.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: rose—

Mr. Ross: I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman took up so much of the time of the House making clear that he knew nothing about what he was trying to explain. We reluctantly came to the conclusion that he had treated the House with pretty much the feeling, that it did not really matter ; no one would know very much about it ; and he did not see any reason why he should know about it. My feeling is this. The removal of the duty to prepare schemes—because in one case he says it is difficult and in the other two cases he has advanced no reason at all—detracts, to my mind, from the importance of these aspects of education.
We have seen in the past acts of the Secretary of State and orders that he has given to local authorities where he has had this bias against adult education, regarding it as the trimmings of education and something that really does not matter.

Miss Herbison: "Frills" was the word.

Mr. Ross: I do not think that we on this side of the House should take up that attitude at all. Many people today have been very concerned about this passive attitude of people even on the question of entertainment and how they spend their time, with the inroads made on reading by television and everything else. I think that when people are prepared voluntarily to give up time in order to educate themselves, whether in recreational pursuits or educational pursuits, the Government should do nothing at all to reduce the importance of that kind of education. My feeling is that this will be the consequence—whether or not the Joint Under-Secretary thinks so, or whether or not he likes it now that he has been told what the Bill is.
I turn to Clause 2 (c)—
special educational treatment other than in special schools.

That has not yet been explained. We do not really know what it means. If it means something that is referred to in Clause 1 (4) of the principal Act, it is a pity that, in a Bill which is so full of cross-references, those words were not put in. It would have made things slightly easier for us and would have given us an idea of what was intended. But it may be that in Committee we shall get fuller information about that.
I should like to refer to a point already made on Clause 3 in respect of truancy. I do not think it is desirable to bring children in front of a juvenile court before an effort has been made to deal with the parents. In many cases the responsibility for truancy does not really lie on the child but on the parents, and it must be kept with the parents. It may well be that we shall have to deal separately with children and parents later on, but always, in the first instance, the parents must be tackled. If it is a declining problem, there is all the more reason why we should deal with it in the way suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison).
Then we have Clause 4. I do not know whether my hearing has gone slightly wrong or whether it was, again, a gloss by the Joint Under-Secretary, but I thought that in referring to this matter he referred to married men and to married men only. Of course, the Clause refers to persons over school age.

Mr. T. Fraser: There are some who are not married.

Mr. Ross: I am sure that there are some who are not married, and I hope that the application is to them all and that the interpretation here will be fairly wide.
I know of some young students who, had they been working, would have been the mainstay of their parents, but whose parents have been prepared to sacrifice beyond any extent to which we might expect parents to sacrifice in order to give those students the opportunity to go to university or to some other form of further education. I should hope that some of their hardships may be reduced by a proper interpretation of this new Clause.
Another word in the Clause which I do not like is the word "may"—
The said regulations may include a provision requiring an education authority. …


It should be obligatory on education authorities in Scotland to ensure that the matter of dependants is taken into account.

Clause 5, which deals with the provision of transport and travelling expenses, is indeed important—very important in the light of what is happening in Scotland where, because of the failure of the Government, we are unable to get the schools we need and children are travelling literally across cities and across towns. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin) will probably tell us what it costs the Glasgow Corporation for transport alone.

Mr. Rankin: Over £300,000 a year.

Mr. Ross: Over £300,000 a year spent by one of the largest education authorities on transport alone—and, if anything, this Clause enables them to spend a little more ; but it is not to cost anybody anything—or, at one time, so it seemed.
There is this addition ; that—
… where there are any vacant places in any vehicle used for such conveyance …
the local authority is to be allowed to use them up.
An hon. Member opposite spoke as though no one in Scotland knew about these difficulties at all. I do not know whether he has been reading the Scottish Press, but there has been very much in the news the case of a girl and her sisters denied the right to travel on such a bus which passed their door. Now, at long last, the local authority has decided to allow her to travel on that bus although, in actual fact, she is now about to leave school.
The difficulties have been there, and the people of Scotland have been aware of them. Naturally, we welcome the fact that they are now being dealt with in this fashion and in this Clause—but I do not know why there have been put into subsection (c) the words :
… the whole or any part. …
All the other additions seem to be worth while but, if my interpretation is right, this is rather introducing an element whereby instead of paying the full expenses the local authority is enabled to cut the expense by paying part only.
I should also like a fuller definition of "person" in subsection (3) of Clause 5. This question of travelling expenses is not fully covered here—and I should like my hon. Friends to realise that. There is something buried away as a minor Amendment in Clause 13—
Minor and consequential amendments and repeals.
That was never touched upon at all by the Joint Under-Secretary. It may well be that I have misinterpreted it, but it is certainly something that demands some explanation.
We are told in line 45 of the First Schedule that an Amendment is made to Section 88 of the principal Act which enables a local authority in future to pay
expenses of removal and of the temporary accommodation of any such teacher or officer ordinarily resident in the area of another education authority who has been appointed to the service of the authority concerned.
In other words, as it seems to me, it would appear that local authorities are to be able to pay for the removal and temporary accommodation of teachers transferred from one area to another. I think that that is important. In these days of shortage of teachers, it could have considerable repercussions—but we have not been given any explanation at all of that Amendment to Section 88. I really regret that the Joint Under-Secretary has not taken the sort of trouble that the Bill merited and that the House expected.
The subject of new regulations for the training of teachers and the issue of certificates is one of the really important matters in the Bill, but we just do not know what additional powers have been given or what changes have been made in this respect. This is a matter of considerable importance. I am perfectly sure that the Scottish Grand Committee could spend two days debating this subject alone—and I think that I heard someone say under his breath "or any other subject."
This matter merits considerable attention—but I shall not endeavour to do the job of the Secretary of State and explain what I think the Clause does. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that the Secretary of State—if he is to reply in the absence of the Lord Rector—will explain fully what changes have been made, and what new powers taken by the Secretary of State are delegated to the training-of-teacher committees in Scotland.
I believe that this could be a very important Bill if we liked to make it so ; if we liked properly to interpret the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum and remove some of the difficulties which have been experienced not only in the administration but in the development of education in Scotland. I am perfectly sure that we are not to get the answer, so I think that all we can suggest for the removal of the difficulties in the way of the development in education in Scotland just now is to invite the present incumbents of St. Andrew's House to hand in their notice. That would get rid of a considerable amount of difficulty.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. C. N. Thornton-Kemsley: It is, of course, very easy to sneer at a Bill like this and to say that because it does not deal with such large subjects as the recruitment of teachers and the building of new schools it is not worthy of our attention. But this little Bill does some useful things, and if we were honest I think we would give it a welcome in all quarters of the House.
There is, for example, the question of the payment for school transport. I myself welcome, as other hon. Members have done, the provisions of Clause 5, and, in particular, subsection (2), which enable education authorities to fill up school buses. I myself have had some experience of this in my constituency where, in one area about which I wrote to my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State, there was a taxi hired daily to take a few schoolchildren a fairly considerable distance to a village school. Then there became too many children for the taxi, so a bus was hired instead, and the smallest bus that could be provided was a 29-seater.
That bus used daily to pass school children who lived within the permitted walking distance—that is to say, who were not three miles from the village school in the case of children of eight years of age and over, and not two miles from the school in the case of children of under eight. The bus would pass them and would even splash them with mud, and would be unable to take them aboard. I asked my hon. Friend that it should be possible to take these children on the bus upon payment, but now, as I understand, it is to be possible to take

children without payment, irrespective of their age and of the distance which they have to walk to school.
If I am right about that, it will give rise to one rather curious anomaly. At the moment, children over 14 years of age, if they travel by public transport, nearly always have to pay the full fare. As I understand, most of the larger bus companies in Scotland charge the full fare to school children over 14 years of age. That gives rise to hardship in certain cases—not a great many I daresay, but in certain cases it does. I understand that local authorities, where they run their own public bus services as they do, no doubt, in some urban areas, have power under the Public Service Vehicles (Travel Concessions) Act, which the House passed last year, to charge half the fare.
But in other cases it is entirely a matter for the licensing and fare-fixing authorities. In such cases the licensing authorities are required to take into consideration any representations which may be made to them by the local authorities concerned, but in cases which have come to my notice in rural areas, the licensing authorities have been unwilling to make this concession to school children 15 years of age and over a condition of granting licences.
I think I am right in saying that the Association of County Councils in Scotland has made certain representations to the bus companies, and that some of the smaller bus companies, to their credit, have agreed to make this concession, and on some routes operated by the smaller bus companies children of 15 years of age and who are still at school are allowed to travel at half fare. But in the case of the major bus companies, and in most areas in Scotland, the full fare is exacted from children 15 years old.
It seems to me that if the local education authority is to be empowered under the terms of Clause 5 (2) to allow children over 14 years of age to travel free for less than three months—perhaps for a mile, or a mile and a half only—if places are available a very strong case could be made out to enable those same local authorities to subsidise the difference between the full fare and the half fare in respect of schoolchildren 14 years of age and over travelling by public transport to their schools.
I am delighted by Clause 1. I am sure that throughout the House a general welcome has been given to it, as indeed the House always welcomes any Measure which is designed to prevent accidents and to promote the safety of children. There is a point that I would like to draw to the attention of my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State, and it is this. It seems that under the provisions of Clause 1 it will be possible for education authorities to contribute to the cost of making good the surface of private streets.
I feel inclined to apologise for talking, as I have so often during the earlier part of this session, about private streets. Under this Bill, if a private street has fallen into such a state of disrepair as to constitute a danger to children—and the form that the danger is likely to take is that the street will be so bad in the winter that the children will be unable to cross it dry-shod in order to get to the public transport—the education authority will be empowered, with the consent of the owners of the road, to resurface it or to contribute towards its resurfacing.
That mght be a fairly considerable expense ; I do not complain about that, but if I am right about the idea that is behind this Clause—namely, the desire to enable a child who has to cross an unmade-up, wet, muddy private street to get to the school bus and to reach it dry-shod—then I think one can make out a strong case for something else that I would very much like to see—namely, the contribution by the education authorities towards the provision of bus shelters in rural areas.
Where children go long distances, as they often do, to pick up a public bus service, when they have season tickets given to them, they have to get to the bus stop in good time to catch the bus. They often have ten minutes or more to wait on the side of the road. When such a bus stop is fairly extensively used by children from surrounding farms, and so on, I think a strong case could be made out for the use of public funds, through the instrumentality of this Bill and through the administration of the education authority, to erect bus shelters if there is no other way in which they could be erected.
There are other points which, no doubt, we shall want to talk about in Committee. There is, however, one thing which is not

covered by the Bill, and as it is a matter concerning the administration of education in Scotland I should like to mention it. Many of us pressed for a long time that retirement pensions to teachers in Scotland should be paid on a monthly instead of a quarterly basis and we were delighted when that concession was made. At the same time, unfortunately, it was necessary for the House to be told that for administrative reasons it could not be done for a long time, and that, while it was hopend to do it by a certain date, it might well take longer.
I should like my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate, when replying to the debate, to give the latest news about this and to let us know how these arrangements are progressing. I am sure that we all want the payment of retirement pensions to school teachers to be put on to a monthly instead of a quarterly basis as soon as possible.

7.11 p.m.

Mr. John Rankin: We are discussing an educational Measure of some importance and I feel that it is rather a pity that the Leader of the House, who has just been returned as Rector at one of our great seats of learning in Scotland —Glasgow University—has not seen fit to grace our proceedings by his presence. If he had come, we might have been able to console him on the fact that he has attained this high office on a minority vote.
I congratulate the Government on the speed with which they are now catching up with the local authorities. If they continue on the course on which they are now embarked, perhaps in due time they will catch up with the rest of the population and become quite progressive in their outlook. I say that the Government are catching up with the local authorities because part of the Bill will now make legal the illegal things which some local authorities, in the interests of the pupils, have been forced to carry out because of the inaction of the Government.
Had any ratepayer in the City of Glasgow or other areas chosen to take the proper steps, he could have prevented the carrying out of the work to which we are now giving our blessing in the Bill. That is a condemnation of the speed at which the Government have progressed in bringing in the Bill, which was printed


and submitted to the House almost a year ago. In the intervening time, they have not found it possible to proceed with this necessary Measure.
As we on this side have said, there is a good deal in the Bill that is desirable and necessary. In presenting the Bill, however, by the way in which he did so, the Joint Under-Secretary somewhat confused the situation. By his attitude to the Bill in his opening speech, the hon. Gentleman prevented it from getting the kind of reception which we were prepared to give it. We recognise that much that the Bill contains meets the requirements of the local authorities and, so far as I have been able to gather from my own local authority, is largely welcomed by them.
As has been pointed out, however, there are certain Clauses which deserve our close attention. I do not want to say anything about Clause 5, because the points which arise on it can be discussed with greater ease in Committee. I want, however, to consider Clause 7. The Joint Under-Secretary pointed out that inspection of the independent schools would cease only in respect of that type of inspection which was carried out at the request of the private or independent schools. Inspection in the normal way is to continue.
I do not know how many independent schools there are in Scotland, but I should reckon that there is a great number of them. Perhaps we could have this information when the Lord Advocate replies to the debate.

Mr. Ross: The Lord Advocate?

Mr. Rankin: So far as I understand, the Lord Advocate will reply. I am told that he has all the qualifications necessary for a reply from the Government side on this debate. Therefore, we shall await with interest what he has to say on many of the points which have been raised.
The point concerning Clause 7 is that the Government have missed the boat. Why did they not lay it down in this little Bill that independent schools should be registered? We have all seen independent schools. I see some of them in the area where I live. A house of a certain size can be obtained and turned into a school, but nobody seems to have any

power of decision at the beginning about the creation of such a school.
So far as I know, nobody decides about playground facilities at these schools or about the accommodation for washing, for lavatories, or for any of the amenities that we insist upon in our public schools. A person simply decides that he or she will have an independent school and charges the type of fee which may give to the neighbourhood the feeling that it is a different school, on a higher level than anything around it, so that the people decide to send their children to it.
That is possible because at the moment, so far as my information goes, no independent school in Scotland is subject to registration. If this were to be done, and every school in Scotland of an independent or a private nature had to be registered, the local authority would know all about it and would have the responsibility for seeing that all the amenities, facilities and safeguards were present in the school. The education of the children might be conducted in circumstances approaching those which we stipulate as being essential in what we call the public schools in Scotland.
Now let us look at Clause 3. I am not going to say it is the most important Clause in the Bill, but it is very nearly the most important, particularly because of subsection (3). I was very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) referred to that subsection when opening the debate from this side of the House. We all, of course, accept the need for compulsory education. There is no argument about that. From compulsory education, compulsory attendance must follow. There is no argument about that either. If attendance is not regular, the irregularity must be dealt with. That is essential.
At present, such irregularities are dealt with, and it is the parents who are punished for them. It is proper that they should be, because the parents, in my view, in all cases are the people who are primarily responsible for the irregular attendance of children at school. Under the law as it stands today we deal with the parents. Now, however, if my interpretation of subsection (3) is correct, we are to reverse the practice. That subsection says :
Where a child in respect of whom an attendance order is in force moves his residence, the education authority of the area to which


the child has moved may amend that order by substituting for the name of the school appearing in the order the name of a school attended by children residing in the same neighbourhood as the child, and the provisions of subsection (5) of the said section thirty-six shall apply in the making of any amendment to such an order under this subsection.
If I interpret that subsection (3) aright, it means that a child's attendance order is now to follow the child wherever it goes. It is tagged on to him so long as he remains at school in any part of Scotland. I wonder when it would follow him into England? I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State or the Lord Advocate will have something to say on that.
At present, if a child leaves an area and goes to another, it starts with a clean record. Now the Government propose that we should take its record with him. We are to make a child's attendance record, known wherever the child goes. Thus we are not now to punish the parents but are to punish the child. That is what that subsection (3) means if my interpretation of it is correct, and the Government thus propose to do something which ought to be regarded as intolerable. It is indefensible in the new type of society, and irreconcilable with the new attitude we want to see adopted towards education.
The child is to carry a stigma wherever he goes. For ten years I was a member of a parish council in Scotland. It was common for persons accommodated at the combination hospital, to stay there all winter, then to move out in the summer. They were tagged wherever they went. One would go to Stirling, then to Perth, to Inverness, but every move was reported back. That is how the Government propose we should now treat children in Scotland's educational system.
They propose to do this at a time when there is to be great development of industry, when industry is expanding into areas where it did not before exist. As it expands it will draw men and women and their children with it. The Government make this proposal at a time when, because of overcrowding in our cities, people will be moving away from them. Glasgow, for instance, has 300,000 people whom it must spill over into adjacent areas if the City of Glasgow is to be properly developed. At this time, when

great movements of people are pending, we are to say to every little child in the City of Glasgow who has been up before the school management committee, "If you leave the city, if your people move out from the city, then you will carry with you your attendance record, which will be known immediately wherever you may go." For there is no secret about it. It is nonsense to say that the attendance record is kept locked within a headmaster's room. There are innumerable instances showing how slender that type of protection is.
I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State will think again about this Clause between now and Monday next. I wonder if he would apply it to the potato diggers? Just now there are between 800 and 900 children in Scotland absenting themselves from school by permission of the Department. They are at the moment irregular attenders under the patronage of the Secretary of State. He will not hold their irregular attendance against them.
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman will hold irregular attendance against, say, the children of such people as gypsies, who assist in the harvest in Scotland, in Perthshire, and along the West Coast. At this time of the year they move about frequently, and it is easy for their children to be stigmatised as irregular attenders even when they are doing exactly the same work that is just now being done by the potato pickers who are licensed to be absent to lift potatoes by the Secretary of State, who presents us with this Bill.
I suggest to the Joint Under-Secretary of State that he withdraws Clause 3 (3). I do not think that its deletion would weaken the Bill in any way. If it is not removed I am sure that from this side an Amendment will be moved to delete it, and that we shall not allow that subsection to pass without a vote. However, I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State will render a vote unnecessary.

This Clause cannot be defended because it reverses the practice which I think most of us would accept—the holding of the parents responsible for an irregular attender and the infliction of the fine or warning on the child's parents. Now we are changing all that. We are to punish the child and make him a


marked person, in whatever school he may be taken to at a time when movements of population on a wide scale are almost inevitable. I hope that, viewing the matter in that light, the Joint Under-Secretary will have second thoughts about subsection (3), that he will agree with me that it ought to be deleted.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Hector Hughes: This is an occasion which should be made a landmark in Scottish educational history. It should be seized as an opportunity to introduce that really useful Bill that Scottish education requires. It is not made such an occasion. The opportunity has been lost. That is proved by the very unusual circumstances attending this Second Reading. I shall mention four of these circumstances.
First, this very important little Bill is brought forward at the tail-end of a Session when the House has no adequate opportunity of considering it or amending it, or of having a proper Committee stage or Third Reading of it. That is so notwithstanding the fact that it first reached the House from another place as far back as 7th February, that it was ordered by the House to be printed on 8th February and has lain dormant in a pigeon-hole ever since. The Government show their opinion of its unimportance by treating it in that very wrong way.
The opportunity has been wasted by the Government, and if the House in its wisdom thought fit to propose and pass Amendments to the Bill it would not have the time to do so. The analysis to which certain Clauses have been subjected here today shows that those Clauses need amendment. The opportunity for making the Bill the useful Bill it ought to be will therefore now be lost.
The second reason why this is an unusual Second Reading is that the Minister did not take the opportunity to explain the Bill fully to the House. My experience of the House as a Member goes back only about ten or eleven years, but I have never known an occasion of a Bill coming before the House for Second Reading when it was not adequately explained to the House by the Minister responsible for it. I say in all seriousness that what has happened today is inconsistent with the traditions of the House. It treats the House as if it were to consider Bills in blinkers without giving them

adequate consideration and amendment to make them the useful and constructive instruments which they ought to be.
The Bill, small as it is, is a difficult Bill. As the debate has shown, it is full of cross-references. It is of that undesirable kind of legislation which is called legislation by reference and delegation. It refers to other Acts of Parliament, and when questions are asked as to what this or that Clause means or this or that phrase means it would be right for the Bill to be fully and clearly and logically explained to the House. But what happened today? When this Clause and that phrase were put to the Minister, although he had at his hand the Lord Advocate to advise him with his learning, he was unable to explain the terms of art which occur in the Bill and to which I referred earlier in this debate. The Minister did not, and apparently could not, explain these although the Lord Advocate was beside him.
I then pointed out that another unusual feature of the Bill is that there is not in it any definition or interpretation Clause. If there were such a Clause it might have been fair enough for the Minister to refer to them and to say, "I will not explain them in the House", but in the absence of such a definition or interpretation Clause it was the bounden duty of the Minister to be armed with the full and clear meaning of every phrase in the Bill so that he could explain it fully to the House.
I do not propose to engage in Committee points. This is a Second Reading, and I do not propose to refer in detail to the construction of many Clauses. But in order to make clear the argument which I have just presented, it is right that I should refer to Clause 1. We are all agreed with the aim and purpose of the Clause. It is very desirable that little children should be protected on their way to school. Every effort should be made to provide legislation which will empower the relevant authority so to protect them. Between the two sides of the House there is no difference on the aim or purpose of that Clause, but there are grave differences about the manner in which the Clause is drafted.
Before a child can be protected under the Clause the poor little thing has to leap over several hurdles. The approval of the Secretary of State has to be obtained, and


the Clause is not mandatory. If the Government were in earnest about protecting these little children they would make the Clause mandatory and clear and coherent so that the relevant authorities would not only have no doubt what the Clause meant but also no doubt of their own powers and would know that under the Clause they were bound to take certain definite steps to protect these children.
The Clause states :
Subject to the provisions of this section and with the approval of the Secretary of State an education authority shall have power …
Surely the approval of the Secretary of State is enough precaution to have to take, without making this merely an enabling Clause? I am sure that the Lord Advocate will agree with my construction of this Clause. It is not a mandatory Clause. It does not say that the relevant authority must or shall take certain steps to protect little children from danger and injury. No, it is an enabling Clause, enabling the local authority to do something after having obtained the approval of the Secretary of State.
The Clause reads : "The education authority shall have power". Not is bound but shall have power after the approval of the Secretary of State to take certain steps to do work to improve the safety of any private road. There, again, we have the same verbosity and the same ambiguity and the same vagueness :
… shall have power … to do work to improve the safety of any private road. …
Why in the name of commonsense, why in the name of the protection of these little children, can the Clause not definitely say that the relevant authority shall be bound to take all the steps necessary to ensure the protection of the children?
The Clause does not indicate what kind of work. Again subsections (2) and (3) are optional, and the proviso to subsection (4) presents another difficulty to this little school child seeking safety. It states :
Provided that where an education authority propose to carry out any such work on land which is in possession of another person, the authority shall obtain the consent of the owner and of the occupier of such land. …
How is the little child or the relevant authority to obtain the consent of the

owner or occupier of such land? There is an alternative, however, for the Proviso continues :
…or shall satisfy the Secretary of State that the owner or the occupier cannot be found.
It is obvious that this vague, verbose and ambiguous Clause presents great difficulty to the relevant authorities. It does not give any indication as to what kind of evidence is to satisfy the Secretary of State or what kind of evidence is to support any of the applications which are to be made under this Clause for his consent or for his approval.
I could go through the other Clauses and criticise them upon the same principles, but I forbear from doing so because this is not a Committee stage. However, the comments and the criticisms I have directed against the Clause apply to the principle of the Clause, and similar criticisms could be directed against the principle of other Clauses too. I support my hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin) and also my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) in the criticism which they both levelled at Clause 3, dealing with bringing a child to court. I am sure that every hon. Member of the House will deprecate the psychological and other ill effects which may ensue from bringing a child of tender years to court. Therefore, I say that Clause 3 ought to be carefully considered in Committee, a thing which is manifestly impossible having regard to the fact that this Bill is brought before the House at so late a stage in the Session.
It is right that I should say that the last Labour Government did much in 1946 for the development of education in Scotland. This little Bill merely tinkers with it. The history of education under former Tory and Liberal Governments shows the lack of any co-ordinating plan for dealing with the great topic of education. From 1872 until 1945 there was a series of Acts barely tinkering with the details of the Scottish educational system, as this little Bill does today. Looking back at that series of Statutes, they look not like a clear path leading to a summit, but like a mosaic of ill-fitting pieces or, indeed, like a crazy pavement. This series of Acts in Victorian and Edwardian periods indicated the faltering and unplanned steps of former Tory and Liberal Governments which failed to


solve the educational problems of the nation. They tinkered with those problems, as does this Bill today.
There is a great deal more I should like to say in criticism of this little Bill, but the greatest criticism I can level against what ought to be a good Bill, what ought to be a landmark, what ought to be a great occasion, is that it is brought at so late a stage in the Session that it cannot be converted from the paltry and wretched little measure that it is into something really useful. I hope the House will tell the Government to take back this wretched little offspring and, after this long Recess, seek another period of gestation in order to bring forth a better, a nobler and a more useful Bill, one more appropriate to the educational problems which it is attempting, but vainly attempting to solve.

7.48 p.m.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: While I sympathise with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes) in his last point, that the Government should withdraw this Bill and bring forward its original conception in some other form, we must try to make this a reasonable and sensible Bill, not, as it was patronisingly referred to by the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley), a useful little Bill, but one worthy of this House and of the Statute Book.
There are a number of useful measures in it and I have no doubt that attempts will be made to remedy its defects during the Committee stage. There is one Clause that I find very attractive, Clause 4, which concerns itself with the permissive provision concerning the maintenance of dependants of a person engaged in full-time study. It is the only gesture in the Bill towards the rather unfortunate position of grants in Scotland but it is, nevertheless, very welcome to me.
When I came to this House, just before Christmas last year, I looked forward to a miscellaneous provisions Bill of this kind which would allow us to modify the existing principles, not necessarily the detailed regulations, of the award of grants in Scotland, as distinct from the award of grants in England and Wales where they are more generous, more realistic and, to my mind, more sensible in their

attitude towards students. When 7th February came, I remember going through the Bill thoroughly and I have been in correspondence with a number of people in Scotland during all these months in the hope that we could draft some reasonable additions to the Bill.
The Bill is essentially one of opportunity. It is a coat-hanger which can carry many kinds of "coats" which could not otherwise be fitted into a full-form Act of Parliament. There are a number of useful garments waiting for us to hang on something, and I want to mention three, not because they are the only three, but because I believe they are three useful ones which it is possible to put into the Bill at this late stage.
The first is a matter which the Lord Advocate must have very close to his own heart. I quote from the January, 1956, issue of the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland. The article is headed :
The legal profession in Scotland—A survey of the position.
The shortage of staff also affects qualified assistants. The following table shows the number of entrance certificates issued by the Council of the Law Society of Scotland to persons commencing legal apprenticeship during the years indicated.
Then follows a table showing that for the year ended 31st December, 1950, there were 174 ; for 1951 there were 174 ; for 1952 there were 155 ; for 1953 there were 146 ; for 1954 there were 108 ; and for 1955 there were an estimated 75. In other words, there is a crisis—I do not think that is an exaggeration—in recruitment for the legal profession in Scotland. There is a great deal of worry on the part of many responsible men of law in Scotland about the staffing of the profession in future.
One of the main contentions of many people in Scotland has been that the reason for the falling off in recuitment is not unconnected with the immense economic difficulties presented to young men who try to enter law today. At present, law students get a very small grant because they are classified as part-time students. A first-year law student in a good firm will get £50 a year, a second-year student £70, and a third-year student £90. The first years are the most difficult of all


At the very best, a Scottish student will get £47 if the income of his parents is not in excess of £400 a year, and from that grant he is expected to pay all his living expenses and his fees and meet the cost of his books, and so on. There is no doubt that of all the students in Scotland the law apprentice is in a very bad position. Since he is in part employment, he has his £50 a year and is then penalised under the regulations because he is recognised by the Scottish Education Department as being a part-time and not a full-time student.
I will not argue the legalities of it, for that is difficult at this juncture, but I suggest to the Lord Advocate that the Government ought to consider bringing forward a permissive Clause so that in cases of hardship local education authorities and the Secretary of State should be empowered to award grants to law students and apprentices and so that students should not always be treated as part-time students for the purpose of the regulations. That last part is probably very tricky. In legal terms, it might not be possible for them to be treated sometimes as on a part-time basis and others not, but surely it is possible for them to be treated as other than part-time students for the purpose of the regulations.
We must try to get the position in Scotland rectified at the earliest opportunity. Such a Bill as this presents us with a splendid opportunity to enable the Scottish Education Department and the local education authorities to make awards in deserving cases. I have a number of signed statements from law students declaring their incomes, the income of their parents, and their expenses. I know some of these students personally. It is fair to say that a number of young Scottish men have been deterred from entering the law because of the absence of a provision of this kind.
I now turn to a second provision under the heading of grants which it would be desirable and possible to bring into such a Bill as this. During the debate on the Education Estimates in the Scottish Standing Committee on 19th June I mentioned the desirability of there being a Departmental advisory committee on bursaries for not only university awards but college and senior secondary school awards. I suggested that the committee

might consist of persons enjoying the respect of most of the Scottish educational bodies.
The committee should conduct an annual review of the awards in the different categories and should receive representations from the national student body, the Scottish Union of Students, faculty student organisations such as the British Medical Students' Association and the British Dental Students' Association and from parent-teachers associations, local education authorities and university staff associations, and so on.
I received an otherwise very full and courteous letter from the Joint Under-Secretary in which he devoted only four lines to this subject. He said that I had suggested the services of an advisory body to conduct an annual review of awards and stated that the Government had the bursary position under regular review and that he doubted whether a useful purpose would be served by having a committee of that kind.
After receiving that reply on 5th July, I inquired of the various bodies concerned whether they had been asked at any time to submit evidence of an economic or sociological nature to any Departmental committee dealing with bursaries in the Scottish Office, and not one could confirm that it had been asked to contribute information for the purposes of a so-called annual review. I do not believe that an annual review is carried out. I hope the Minister will be able to contradict me and tell me what the machinery is. Many people in Scotland will be glad to know that such machinery exists and that they can make representations. I am referring not to the students themselves, but to the many others who are anxious that there should be fair and equitable awards to the different categories of the student body.
I have left my third point to the end because I should like to make the Bill not the "useful little Bill" referred to by the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns but a really first-class Bill, a landmark in Scottish education history. It does not seem long ago in terms of human society that student government was founded in Scotland. It was a Scottish student, Robert Fitzroy Bell, who went on a tour of the Continent and discovered the first students' society in council at Strasbourg. He returned to


Edinburgh in 1883 and founded the Edinburgh University Students' Representative Council. In quick succession, the four Scottish universities had students' representative councils established.
These bodies have done wonderful work. Many Members of Parliament served in them in their earlier years. Today, student government is a well-recognised and well-established form of university administration within the four Scottish universities. Also, it is enshrined in a famous Act of Parliament, the Universities Act, 1889, which established the S.R.C.s in Scotland.
Unfortunately, the S.R.C.s in the colleges—I have in mind, for example, the Royal Technical College, Glasgow—were founded shortly after the Universities Act was passed. In 1893, the S.R.C. of the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, was set up, but without the statutory recognition afforded by the Universities Act. There are now 21 S.R.C.s in Scotland without statutory recognition. Some of them are well-established, have good funds, and do excellent work. Others are very strictly limited in the scope of their work by, to put it mildly, rather unsympathetic boards of governors. Indeed, one S.R.C. was abolished by the principal because it dared to question his authority, conviction and opinion in a certain matter concerning the actual government of the college itself.
In Scotland, as the Lord Advocate knows, we are proud of the fact that, unlike England, we are the champions of student participation in university government. We do not believe that the student is completely devoid of rights in his contribution to university government, whether in terms of the conditions of the student, or of the curricula of the university. That is why we elect a lord rector. It testifies to the English students that we have a semblance of the past, an office of the past which reminds us of the two different influences from the Continent, one affecting England and one affecting ourselves. We are anxious to see that the ideal of student government in Scotland is pursued.
In this Bill we had an opportunity statutorily to recognise the college S.R.C.s as they are in Scotland today. That would not have been unreasonable and I do not see another Measure in

which we could have introduced a matter of this kind. I have received much correspondence on this topic and I have not found any college authority opposed to statutory recognition of the student council. Some college authorities are a little uncertain about what the full powers of student government should be, but I can assure the House that every one of the existing student councils is very much in favour of securing statutory recognition for itself. That would mean a formal recognition in some cases and a practical recognition in others of the participation of the student body in the administration of the college.
The Speaker of the House of Commons, when he was a student at Edinburgh University, is on record in the S.R.C. minutes for 1920 or thereabouts as having supported provisions for the first grants in Scotland. It is often thought that the only function of student councils is to deal with grants. In fact, the students provide a great deal in their student representative councils. Not only do they secure evidence to show that grants should be amended, improved, modified and so on, and demonstrate where there are anomalies, but they also provide services to many students through employment agencies, in health and in securing mass miniature radiography campaigns and the provision of facilities of different kinds. That provides an excellent training in responsibility and gives students with high spirits an opportunity for directing their energies into a channel of constructive administration.
In other words, a Bill such as this should not merely by-pass the recognition of student councils. To that end I address my closing remarks. Such a provision dealing with student councils could have been incorporated in a Bill like this. The matter of law apprentices can be tackled and if there is not an annual review in process we should, in a Bill of this kind, recognise a committee to review the annual awards to students, whether full-time or part-time, university, college or senior secondary scholars.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. William Hannan: It has been the experience of most hon. Members that the longer a debate continues the less necessary does one's speech become. However, in today's


debate I am glad to have the opportunity at least of reinforcing some of the points which have been made by my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) has made a powerful case for some additions to the Bill, and I hope that when the Government consider the matter further they will pay close attention to his words.
When the Joint Under-Secretary opened the debate today—if that is the proper description—he was not his usual ebullient self. He was uneasy and seemed to be skating over or evading some of the very pointed questions put to him by my hon. Friends. It is to those points that I should like to return. We have already heard that Clause 1 deals with the provision of safety measures for pupils going to and from school. There is a phrase in the Clause to which I should like to call attention. It is :
… for the purpose of reducing the risk of accident to pupils going to or returning from schools or other educational establishments in their area and under their management, or while actually present at such schools or establishments …
Therefore, the Clause deals with children not merely when they are going to or from school, but while they are on the premises.
I should like to see the scope of the Clause widened to bring in safety measures other than road safety and so on. These measures are extremely important and would include health and better buildings and so on. Let none be under any illusion about some school buildings in Scotland. Some of them are extremely dangerous. While most of us—and the local authorities—have great respect for the assurances of local officials that buildings are safe, there is always the human element. We have known before of serious collapses of school buildings in Glasgow. Such incidents can be extremely serious, and the safety of the children may thus be imperilled.
I referred to some of these matters in a recent debate in the House when we discussed not education, but health. I have had a letter from the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland replying to my statement that dysentery among children in Glasgow has been caused by insanitary conditions in the lavatories of

the schools. Many of us know of such conditions. The Clause should cover not merely road safety, but conditions such as those. Had it done so, it would have received a warmer welcome.
I want to return to the very important case put by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) about Clause 2. I am not satisfied that the replies of the Joint Under-Secretary to my hon. Friend on this issue could give rise to confidence. Clause 2 says that for Section 7 (1) of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1946, shall be substituted the words which follow. But at line 19 come the ominous and significant words :
… except where such functions relate to …
further education. Local authorities, it appears, will not be required to submit formal schemes in respect of voluntary part-time and full-time students over school age. Nor will it be necessary to support schemes in respect of the voluntary leisure-time occupations in such organised cultural training and recreational activities as are suited to their requirements for persons over school age.
Some of us are suspicious that, under cover of these words and exceptions, an attempt may be made to cut down on the activities and pursuits which local authorities can offer to their citizens. Many of these activities are the very kernel of education itself. But this matter goes further. If hon. Members will look at Clause 2 (1, b) they will see that it states—
such facilities as are mentioned in section three of this Act …
Under that Section of the 1946 Act, education authorities, with the approval of the Secretary of State, may "establish, maintain and manage" camps, holiday classes, playing fields, playgrounds, gymnasia or swimming baths, not merely for adults, but for pupils at junior, secondary and primary schools. This is a very dangerous situation, and I should not be prepared to give my assent to this Bill unless assurances about these matters are forthcoming.
Now I wish to refer briefly to Clause 4 and suggest that its provisions should be widened, not merely in respect of students, for whom my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock spoke, but for another important section of the school community. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware that in the secondary


schools there is a grave wastage caused by pupils who leave school at the age of fifteen before they have completed their full course. At that age young people are attracted from school life to take jobs which, even for children of that age, provide wages of £3 and £4 a week.
While there are many parents who economically are in a position to resist the temptation, there are many—I will not go into the reasons in order to make a political point about the behaviour of the Government in this matter—to whom the earning of an extra £3 or £4 by their children is an attraction ; and so children capable of making good in the educational world are being taken away from school. A strong case may be made out for increasing the grants given at that age in respect of these children in order to persuade the parents to encourage their children to stay at school and make the best of their talents.
I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will have regard to the points I have tried to make. I hope that in the matter of grants for students and for children aged fifteen, and in regard to safety measures, both when the children are in the school buildings and when they are travelling to and from school, the Government will produce some Amendments to be discussed during the Committee stage : or if not. that they will accept the Amendments which undoubtedly will be moved by hon. Members on this side of the House.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. David J. Pryde: We can all agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) that the longer a debate in this House continues the less necessary it becomes for Labour Members to spend much time in discussing points. But there are one or two aspects which we must emphasise, and I wish to pay particular attention to Clauses 1, 3 and 4.
The safety of children takes prior place. One thing about the Labour Party which has always impressed me is that it has always argued that the most valuable asset in this world is human life. While I cannot especially blame the Government for the situation of our schools today, I can certainly blame them for the conditions of some of our schools.

But we must be fair and attribute some of the dangers connected with our present schools to bad planning. Many of our schools are very badly sited. I am glad to say that the Joint Under-Secretary took the initiative in my part of the country in trying to counteract that very dangerous position.
For the condition of some of our schools I must attribute a great measure of blame to the Government. In the constituency which I have the honour to represent, I regret to say that we have schools which are still without modern sanitary conveniences. I warn the Joint Under-Secretary and the Lord Advocate that the people of Midlothian are on the point of making it perfectly clear to everyone that they will not stand for that any longer. Only a fortnight ago I had to go to one district, Whitecriag, and assure the people there that the Midlothian education authority was doing its best to try to safeguard the welfare of the children in this respect. But I suggest that when one hears about epidemics of poliomyelitis, etc., and one thinks about schools without modern sanitary conveniences, there is good ground for fear among parents.
I put it to the Government that something more could be done regarding the transport of children. When children have to travel two miles or so to school on wet days, it stands to reason that they must have to sit all day in wet garments. It is time that we took a more up-to-date view of such matters and saw to it that our children are transported direct to school. I doubt if there is one person associated with the promotion of this Bill who sends his child to a council school. But we have to send our children to council schools, and we are demanding that our children shall get the same treatment as the children of the rich.
This morning as I entered this building I had drawn to my attention the case of one of my constituents who had gone to England to take an examination and qualify, but he had to give up the course because he was not getting sufficient to keep his wife and family. That is not the only case which I could mention. I had to deal with the case of a very talented young Pole who came to this country, of course, as a displaced person. Because of his marital responsibilities he could not take a qualifying course at


Edinburgh ; and I think we should welcome that part of the Bill which relates to such matters, even though, as was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes) it is small and pettifogging.
In Scotland there has been a tendency to boast of our standard of education, but I doubt if the standard in Scotland is as high as in England. Make no mistake, the people in Scotland will not stand for it. We believe that our childdren are entitled to and must get a standard of education comparable with the scientific age in which we live. The children of Scotland must fit a world in which science plays a major part. Scotland always has done so, and we do not for a moment intend to accept something less.

Clause 3 will stamp our children with a stigma that this House should reject. I ask the Government to rephrase Clause 3, because the juvenile court was never intended to punish the delinquent child who has played truant. It is terrible for a child to have a criminal record. The juvenile court was never intended to attach a stigma to school children. Most healthy boys have at one time or another played truant from school, but Clause 3 will stamp it as something out of the ordinary. That is the type of treatment that a boy will resent and fight against, and he will never be fit for anything. I ask the Joint Under-Secretary of State to take the Clause back and phrase it in a more acceptable way.

Clause 4 deals with grants. The Treasury must hold itself responsible for the shortage of cash in grants. We used to quibble about the Goschen formula, but if the Government expect Scotland to keep pace with England and other nations they will understand that we must have equal educational chances and facilities.

8.22 p.m.

Mr. A. Woodburn: I understand that the Lord Advocate is to wind up the debate ; if that is so, I hope that he will make good what the Joint Under-Secretary of State described as deficiencies in his explanation of the purpose of the Bill. The House is not quite clear about the differences that the Bill will bring about.
I felt really sorry for the Press, who had to explain what the Bill was all about. The Joint Under-Secretary did not make the matter clear to me, but that may be my fault. I hope that the Lord Advocate will reduce the explanation to such language as the ordinary person can understand. Bills are necessarily drawn in legal language, but all the "whereases" have to be intelligibly explained to Members of Parliament. After all, it is no use our pretending that we can interpret every Clause of every Bill.
I would add my support to what my hon. Friends have said in protest about the Bill coming on at the tail end of the Session. We are often accused of being at the tail end of England, but we are now at the tail end of Parliament. It is a little unfair that the first Education Bill of a comprehensive character, and which might have permitted a debate on the educational system of Scotland, is introduced in circumstances which make impossible the fulfilment of our function of discussion.
The 1918 Education Act for Scotland was a tremendous achievement in legislative power. The 1945 Act was passed under the pressure of an interregnum after the war, before the coming into power of the Labour Government. The Bill that we are discussing was partly a consolidation Measure and was not discussed at all. As a matter of fact, there has not for many years been a proper, comprehensive discussion of our educational system and of the degree to which we have implemented the legislation that this House has passed.
There is nothing wrong with the law of education. The 1919 Act empowered us to do things that we never did until the next world war. The Education Act passed during the latter war was to the credit of the new Lord Rector of Glasgow University because of the part he played in the passing of the Act for England and Wales, and of the Act for Scotland. These laws give such powers to any Government that almost anything that is good can be done.
We may now hear from the Lord Advocate that the Labour Government did not do these things after 1945. The reason was very simple : people were desperate for houses. If we had built junior colleges we should have sacrificed


150 or 180 houses. The building of nursery schools would have meant the sacrifice of houses. We were not in a position to sacrifice housing and the building of schools to accommodate pupils from the new houses and resulting from the growth of population. That does not mean that junior colleges and nursery schools are not a very vital part of the education system.
The nursery school makes a greater impression on the child mind than any other part of the educational system. One great advantage of the nursery school is that it educates not only the child but, very often, the mother. It is interesting to find that in many ways the nursery school has the most advanced educational methods. I wish that primary education had some of the same advantages and improvements as the nursery schools and the secondary schools. The primary school is still the Cinderella of the Scottish educational system.
We had an education advisory committee, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) and the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland were members. The committee has been changed in personnel from time to time, but has done an immense amount of work in trying to show the road for Scottish education. Several reports were submitted to me when T was Secretary of State and I did my best to carry out their recommendations with such modifications as I thought were necessary, and to impress them on education authorities.
This would have been a suitable opportunity for us to have discussed the progress we have made in Scottish education. We have rested on our laurels and it is the opinion of some educationists that instead of being ahead of England we have now to consider whether we are keeping pace with England in educational standards. It is the education which is important in Scotland, not all the little legal frills which have to be adjusted. Somehow or other the House ought to examine where we stand in relation to the legislation which is being passed. In Committee, we shall try, by Amendments, to bring out some of the points that we think need pressing. There, it may be that some of these matters can be raised in greater detail.
We all recognise that this Bill is tidying up and doing useful work here and there. The hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley) raised some very important points about transport and getting co-operation between bus authorities and local authorities. I propose to raise specific instances on that matter at a later stage if I find myself in order.
There are some things about this Bill which I think could be very considerably improved. For instance, if we turn to page 12 of the Bill we find a repetition of what has gone on in many Bills. We keep making lists of bodies and organisations which continually have to be changed. In the Second Schedule words are to be omitted and others added. What is the use of employing an Act of Parliament for things of that kind? Those are things which should be done by the Secretary of State by regulations. The whole convenience of Orders in Council is that, instead of Acts of Parliament having to be passed every time punctuation or some words have to be altered, power can be given to the Secretary of State to submit the alteration to Parliament by regulation. If we are to tidy up Acts of Parliament we ought not to find it necessary to obtain a place in the queue of legislation for items which can be put right quite simply by regulations submitted to the House.
My hon. Friends have raised many valuable questions which I hope the Government will think about between now and Committee stage. One of the troubles about a Bill of this kind is that it is not so much the law which is at fault but the will of the Government. For instance, there is nothing which prevents the Government doing these things. The Government have all the power necessary to do all the things which my hon. Friends have been asking should be done. The Government have not the will in some cases, and in other cases they may be able to justify themselves by saying that they have not the power; but the general impression in educational circles today is that the Government are niggling away, picking bits off here and introducing little economies there with the result that often the very things necessary to make education work smoothly are being frittered away and people are discouraged and disheartened.
My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Pryde) referred to sanitation in schools. That is a disgrace, not of this Government but of the educational system. It should have been improved long before the war, when plenty of labour was available. The fact that today children are washing in cold water and have not proper facilities for drying their hands, and are made miserable in cold winters, is really a disgrace, when we are spending millions of pounds on things which, in the long run, are not nearly so important.
We passed an Act of Parliament dealing with food and drugs with a view to preventing the spread of disease. As my hon. Friend pointed out, we are not allowing that spread to be prevented by the first essential in the schools—that we should allow children to be clean. There is no point in making children clean when their hands are blue with the cold. My memory goes back to the days when my hands were blue and I was shivering. Everyone knows how uncomfortable it was when we were youngsters, but surely we have got beyond that stage now.
There are other things which should be discussed in this House some day, including the question of the school feeding system. I really cannot understand those in charge of education who think that school feeding is simply a matter of pushing so many calories down a child's throat. Food is an essential part of living and if the French can teach us anything it is that they enjoy eating. In this country it is not an enjoyment at all, but a matter of getting so many calories in before rushing back to work.
People who are well-to-do, and who develop what we call culture, like to have things artistically, neatly and cleanly provided. They like to eat with good manners and like people about them to eat with good manners. Why people do not think that is a part of education is something beyond me. The idea in our schools that soup is to be splashed into plates and eaten as quickly as possible, no matter how, is a disgrace. We have domestic science teachers, cookery teachers and other people who have taste, so why is taste not a part of the art of the school?
If anyone can convince me that children drawing elephants and all sorts

of things on bits of paper are making a contribution to art which is more important than decorating a table with flowers and making it suitable for a civilised family, then there is something wrong with my brain. Art is not a matter merely of putting things on paper. Anyone who goes through this House of Commons sees art in stone. The very House itself is a piece of art.
Those who see the master's and the apprentice's pillars in Rosslyn Chapel are looking at art done by masons, and the masons who built those buildings were artists. Mothers and daughters in homes who decorate a beautiful table and lay it out so that everyone comes to it with a great deal of pleasure are as great artists as anybody who ever put anything on canvas.
It is more important than painting pictures which go into the vaults of the National Gallery that our children should be brought up to appreciate good taste and good manners. That can be taught in schools as much as the height of Mount Everest and other things which children forget almost as soon as they have learned them. Housewifery is an essential part of education. It is a great pity that this House does not have the opportunity of making clear what its views are on education, in the hope that it will reach the people actually carrying on the job.
What has been done with all that has been sent out by the Secretary of State's Department about primary and secondary education? Have these reports been implemented? Is it within the power of the Secretary of State to ask that some of these reports be implemented? Should the House not have a record of what is being done in regard to the power which has been given the Government of the day to carry them out. We were subject to the limitations of building trades and many other limitations after the war, and I admit that the Government are still subject to many limitations, but not nearly so many. I hope that the Lord Advocate will assure us that the Government will stop all these little finicky economies which, in terms of cash, are a mere bagatelle when compared with what we are spending on war and other things, and that the education of the children will be taken in hand as something which is a vital part of the future of this nation.
The nation, as one of my hon. Friends pointed out, requires that the best brains be given the best opportunity. There are still many children by-passing the results which they could give to the nation because they are attracted away by higher or immediate pay and education is made a risk. There are parents who go to headmasters and say, "I would like my boy to go through university, but he may not get through. He has been offered a job now and the opportunity of earning his living and progress if he develops." The parent has to weigh up the chances of a boy going to a university and losing an offer which has been made to him—and every parent is, naturally, tempted to allow a boy to earn money immediately.
We are in this way missing many children who might do well and serve the nation. We cannot afford to lose brains merely because the parents happen to be poor. There are hon. Members in this House who were born in relatively poor homes, but who, because of energy and brains, have overcome all obstacles. It is not all such hardy warriors who have brains. Some of the brains are in more delicate bodies, and we have to see that where there is a good brain it is not lost to the nation.
One of the essential features today of universities and higher education is to see that the children who have the possibility of serving the nation in those higher flights get the opportunity and are not handicapped because they take it, otherwise we shall not hold our own with America, Russia and other nations. I inquired very carefully whether the number of Russian graduates was inflated by low standards of education. It is easy to increase the number of graduates by lowering the standards and I thought that perhaps the number of people who graduated in Russia and America was merely because our standards were so high that it made the hoop more difficult to jump through.
I am assured that that is not the case, and that these countries are devoting energy and money in order to bring up the best of their brains to the highest possible level. I therefore hope that in our educational system we shall provide the bursaries, and the powers required for the Government to do that.
I hope that there is to be no restriction in this Bill such as is suggested in Clause 14 (5). To me there is a bit of a contradiction. Clause 14 (5) reads :
Nothing in this Act shall impose any charge on the people or on public funds. …
On the other hand, the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum says :
The provisions of the Bill which are most likely to cause some increase in expenditure…
However, from what the right hon. Gentleman says, I gather that that is coming out.
As I say, this Bill makes some little alterations in the law, but, in the main, it is not the law that is at fault in relation to our education but the fact that we do not seem to have either the will or the power to do more.
Of all countries, Scotland depends on her brains. She has only coal, and not too much of that, and it is at very great depth. Even that coal is harder to win that it is in other parts of the kingdom. We have nothing but our brains, and if Scotland is to maintain her tradition and her standard of living then education is our first base on which to raise that standard of life, and it is by our efforts in education that the future of our country will be measured.
I hope, therefore, that, in the passing of this Bill, to any suggestions that come from my hon. Friends to improve education—either by improving the facilities for the children, or by making it possible for the children to get the best out of education and for education authorities to do all they wish to do without unnecessary little restrictions—the Government will lend a willing hand to get those suggestions put into effect.

8.42 p.m.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. W. R. Milligan): The first note that I had among the notes I have prepared was that Scotland is always noted for its interest in education. Not unnaturally, that was the theme which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) developed, and I respectfully entirely agree with him. Through all these centuries we have probably led the world in education. The great endowments which we find in our cities are a tribute to that. It is, accordingly, not surprising that this evening's debate has been full of interest


and full of new ideas. Some particularly interesting ideas were put forward by the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon), and all the other suggestions that have been put forward, both of a general kind and in particular reference to this Bill, will, of course, be anxiously considered by the Government.
Today we have had the advantage—and from the Government's point of view it is an advantage—of a canter over the course before we pass on to the Committee stage. We have had many helpful suggestions from both sides, and we are now in a position, before that Committee stage, to consider them in greater detail, knowing what particular points are interesting hon. Members.
This Bill has been described today in several ways. It was described first as a Bill to remove difficulties. At a later stage it was described as a Bill of miscellaneous provisions. Later, the hon. Member for Greenock, I think, described it as a Bill of opportunity. I agree with all these definitions. So far as the Bill of opportunity is concerned, the only challenge is that the Government have not taken sufficient opportunity to put more into the Bill. We are all Oliver Twists in our way, and it is only natural that everybody should want to put in some extra provisions dealing with something in which they are particularly interested. But we cannot necessarily always put in everything. We will certainly consider the additional suggestions which have been made, tempting as many of them are, but at this stage I certainly cannot give any guarantee that we will necessarily be able to adopt any of them in this Bill.
Everybody knows the difficulty, when legislation is being passed—and I am particularly thinking of 1945 and the consolidating Measure in 1946—of foreseeing all the contingencies which lie ahead. Sooner or later amendments are necessary ; new ideas are put forward, and circumstances change. I note that in this Bill there are certain Clauses which are attributable to various changes of circumstances—the desire for speeding up, clarification and the like.
Take, for example, simplification. The working of this Bill has shown that certain aspects of education could probably be carried on with greater effect and sim-

plicity if an alteration were made relating to the requirements of certain schemes in certain cases. Clause 2 is an example of giving effect to that requirement. For reasons which were given at an earlier stage, it is found that certain matters which normally would have required formal schemes to be made could more conveniently be carried out without a formal scheme. That is the purpose of Clause 2.

Mr. Ross: Could the right hon. and learned Gentleman give us some information on what was left out by the Joint Under-Secretary? He related his arguments only to what he knew about Clause 2, which was the matter of adult education.

The Lord Advocate: At a later stage I was going to deal with one or two of the Clauses, including Clause 2, in detail.
Expedition is sometimes found to be necessary. Things are working too slowly ; the machinery is not working as fast as it might. Clause 12, to which I do not think any reference has been made in the course of the debate, is designed to expedite the appeal procedure. Under the present appeal procedure an agreement has got to be reached by the interested parties on certain facts. They have got to be adjusted, and that takes time. The new procedure which is suggested will mean that the appeals will get into court more quickly. The grounds of appeal will be the same, but there will not be the delays in trying to get the facts adjusted.
Another reason for a Bill of this kind is that additional powers are required. Clause 1 is an extremely good example of that, and it is a Clause which has interested hon. Members on both sides of the House.

Mr. Hector Hughes: As the right hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned Clause 1, will he consider my suggestion that it should be changed from an enabling Clause to a mandatory Clause?

The Lord Advocate: Not only had I reached Clause 1, but I was just coming to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes). He said that the Clause was vague and verbose. In that he was wrong. He said also that the Clause was permissive. In that he was right. The question has been anxiously considered


whether or not it would be appropriate that an education authority should be forced—that is what the hon. and learned Member wished—to carry out all the work that it can carry out. I think that, on reconsideration, the House would realise that that would be putting an appalling burden upon an education authority. Think, for example, of the glens up the Highlands, with not too good roads and perhaps potholes and the like. If it was suggested that a local authority must by law repair all these potholes, one would be trying to do an operation which was quite out of keeping with the necessities of the situation. So I do not for one moment think that we can make the Clause obligatory.
Certain other suggestions were made. The hon. Member for Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) suggested that the Clause might include buildings—in other words, that work should be done on buildings. The education authorities themselves, however, can at present make improvements on the buildings. The real purpose of Clause 1 is to enable an education authority to operate, which it cannot do at present, on property which does not belong to the education authority. What it will do is to get the consent of the owner of the property and, with his consent, carry out the operations which it considers necessary.
Another reason why the 1946 Act has to be amended is that there may be an injustice—

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: Before my right hon. and learned Friend leaves Clause 1, I was wondering whether he would deal with the question not only of repairing footpaths and bridges, but of making new footpaths or footbridges where these are justified.

The Lord Advocate: I was coming later to the point raised by my hon. and gallant Friend, but perhaps I might deal with it now. The answer to his question—whether a brand new road or footpath could be made under this power—would be "No", if it did not exist at all. Of course, if something which was a path was already in existence—and it is almost certain that there would be a track—it could be improved or repaired. If a road was to be made, it might be desirable and possible for the local authorities to take the land by compulsory power.

I think the position would be that if there was absolutely no trace of any path or road, the Clause would not enable a path or road to be made.

Mr. T. Fraser: Would the vaguest semblance of a path running through a field be a private road in accordance with the provisions of the Clause? Surely, it deals with private roads.

The Lord Advocate: I think the hon. Member will find that "private road" includes a path. I do not want to delay the House at this hour, but I think it will be found either in the definition Clause—

Mr. Ross: There is no definition Clause.

The Lord Advocate: No, there is not. So far as the definition Clause is concerned, there is reference back in Clause 14 of the Bill to the Act of 1946, which contains a long definition Clause, and the two Measures "may be cited together" and construed together.

Mr. T. Fraser: "Private road" is defined in Clause 1 (5).

The Lord Advocate: I was rather diverted from subsection (5) and taken up another road by the intervention of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). Perhaps I may restore myself to the main road—Clause 1 (5)—and see exactly how "private road" is defined. It means :
any road, street or path other than a public road, and includes any ford or bridge over which a private road passes.
The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) can rest assured, therefore, that a path could be dealt with.
The general criticism of the Bill has been that it does not do enough. Various suggestions have been made.

Miss Herbison: Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman left Clause 1? I raised a question on subsection (2) and asked whether it would mean long discussions and delay in discussing these matters with private people.

The Lord Advocate: I had intended to take the various questions which were put to me together at the end. I was merely indicating the general purposes of the Bill. After all, this is a Second Reading debate.
The main question in criticism has been, why is there not more in the Bill? Various suggestions have been made by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), for instance, that Clause 5 (3) should be compulsory, and the same suggestion was made that Clause 1 should be compulsory and not permissive. That was suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North, and further suggestions were made by the hon. Member for Greenock. All those were possibilities, but one must stop somewhere, and one must keep one's Bill within reason. The suggestions which have been made will be considered, but I cannot hold out any special hope of the Bill's being taken any further than it is at the moment.
Now I will deal briefly with various matters which have been raised by various Members, and in dealing with them I shall try in general to deal with the intentions of certain of the Clauses. I do not think the House will want me at this stage to go through each and every Clause in full detail to explain what it means, but perhaps I may give the general purpose of each Clause. That may be of help to hon. Members when we are in Committee. I can do it in a nutshell perhaps, though in some cases it will be a rather large nut.
We all understand exactly what Clause 1 is driving at. It is to enable the education authority, with the approval of the Secretary of State, to reduce the risk of accidents to pupils on their way to and from school or while actually present at school. The reason why we say "at school" is that it may be desirable that we should be able to prevent a lorry bringing school meals, from going into the playgrounds, because that would be to prevent accidents from happening to those at school.
The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North asked whether under subsection (2) there would necessarily be delay and the like, and who was to co-operate with whom. In the past experience has shown that landowners in country districts have been extremely kind and have made no difficulty about children going through their grounds or round their fields. The difficulty we have found, and which education authorities have found, is that though there are

certain things which would improve safety—a handrail on a footbridge, for instance, or something of that kind—the proprietor himself has not been prepared to put them up, and the local authority, though willing to put them up, has not been, by the law as it is at present, entitled to do so, because the bridge, for instance, is not the property or on the property of the local authority. I do not think we need anticipate any long argument or wrangling, but, of course, it has to be noticed that before the authority can enter upon anybody's land it must, under the proviso to subsection (3), obtain the consent of the owner and occupier.
Clause 2 is a complicated and rather troublesome Clause and has been referred to by several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Kilmarnock. The purpose of this amendment of the law is part of the purpose of simplifying the situation, and it is to dispense with the submission and approval of schemes—formal schemes—by the education authorities under their functions relating to certain things, four things : first, voluntary part-time and full-time courses of instruction; second, voluntary, leisure-time occupation by persons over school age; third, facilities for recreation and social and physical training by persons receiving primary, secondary, and further education; and fourth, special educational treatment of pupils where such treatment is not given in a special school.
Those are the purposes. I could develop this at greater length by going more minutely into the Clause, but if there is any Member whom I can assist in any way between now and the Committee stage in trying to build up the Clause I would much prefer to do that rather than keep the House here interminably in going into the actual make-up of the Clause.
We have heard, naturally, a good deal about Clause 3. It provides for three things in particular. It provides for the possibility of pronouncing an attendance order where the decision whether to prosecute the parents has been postponed. It also makes reference to the new area, that is to say to the fact that the attendance order will follow the child into the new area. It will not cross the Border. The hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin)


expressed great horror at the idea that this attendance order, was, as it were, going to follow the child through all its school life. I wonder whether the hon. Member is not being unduly apprehensive, because when a child goes from one school to another the school authorities at once check up on its attendance. There is a record of its progress and attendance which is submitted by the previous authority to its new school. I do not know whether the fact that it takes its attendance order with it in its pocket, as it were, really matters, because the new school learns all about it anyway.

Mr. Rankin: I do not believe that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is introducing a fair comparison, because he is dealing with a scholastic matter which is something different from an Act of Parliament.

The Lord Advocate: We are dealing here with the fact that where parents by reason of their occupation periodically have to move and there is an attendance order in respect of one of their children, it is desirable that the attendance order should go on and be effective, instead of a new attendance order perhaps having to be obtained in the new school.
The third point refers to the prosecution of the parents. It enables an education authority to direct that a child be brought before a juvenile court where the authority is satisfied that it is necessary to do so to secure the child's regular attendance at school. That is an alteration in the law, because originally it could not be done by an education authority. The suggestion has been strongly made that, if one can possibly help it, the child should not be taken to court. I respectfully agree with that suggestion, but there may be cases in which, under the Bill, the education authority may now be the judge whether a child should go to a juvenile court or not. I do not for a moment suggest that that power should be frequently used, but in order to get the child there it is necessary for the authority to have that power.
I think that Clause 4 has met with general approval. It is to allow the approving of bursaries to take into consideration the maintenance of dependants. The right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire asked me for an assurance that we would not be niggling and intro-

duce what he called "finicky economies." This is the very opposite of a finicky economy. It is something the other way, and I do not think that in the Bill there are any economies made, finicky or otherwise. I am subject to correction on this, but I believe that in so far as the financial situation alters in any way or other it goes in favour of a child or its parent. I quite agree with the right hon. Member that we should not have finicky economy.

Mr. Woodburn: While I am glad to have the assurance of that paragraph, may I ask how the right hon. and learned Gentleman can say that when the Government put a Clause of that kind in a Bill it will not be a cost to the Government or to public funds? What is the Clause doing if it is not costing anything?

The Lord Advocate: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman at this stage does not want to enter into a discussion about the equalisation grant. I think I am right in saying that, prior to the recent Valuation and Rating (Scotland) Act, the provisions of this Bill would have had no effect on public funds, though they might have had on the rates.

Clause 5, which deals with transport expenses, has met with general approval, and certain helpful criticisms have been made which will be given special consideration. Although this Clause is easy to understand, one hon. Member rightly suggested that there might be all kinds of technical difficulties, such as when a child was ill or missed the bus. Of course there will be masses of technical difficulties, but sound common sense should be able to overcome them all.

We decided that Clause 6 was merely a repetition of the existing law. Clause 7 discontinues the right of managers of schools to apply for inspection on payment of the expenses involved. Such schools may still be inspected, but they will not be entitled to ask for an inspection at any particular time. In this connection, I was asked to give the number of pupils at private schools—

Miss Herbison: We are not yet clear about the position of those schools in Scotland known as private schools with managers. Are they now in the same position as ordinary schools provided by the education authority, that they may be examined at any time, or will there still


be schools where the conditions for the pupils are awful but which will not be examined at all?

The Lord Advocate: I think the hon. Lady will find that Section 61 of the 1946 Act, which is not being touched, authorises the inspection of any school. Accordingly, any establishment purporting to be a school could be inspected. Section 62 of the 1946 Act deals with rather special examinations. One hon. Member raised the question of the registration of independent schools. That is dealt with in Part V of the 1946 Act.

Clause 9 is rather a troublesome Clause and, if the House will bear with me for one moment, our worst hurdles will be over. The difficulty about Clause 9 is that not only does it make some slight alteration, but it turns Section 77 of the 1946 Act upside down and inside out. That was done to make the Clause tidier. Once we can understand what happens, however, it is easier, but it is rather difficult to find out at first sight what the Clause does. To help hon. Members I will state shortly what Clause 9 does.

Subsection (1) is consolidation of part of former subsection (2) and part of former subsection (3). Subsection (2) of the new Section 77 repeats the former subsection (1) with a minor widening of the regulation-making power. The new words used are "ancillary and incidental". Subsection (3) is a new definition of how the general power to prescribe the duties and powers of the training authorities may be exercised, and various ways are set out. There, a delegation is introduced which was not in the original Section 77.

Mr. Ross: Is there any substantial change in meaning or transfer of powers under subsection (3)?

The Lord Advocate: Part of subsection (3, c), particularly the end, is new. Subsection (3, c) was introduced partly because there was some doubt about certain matters which were being carried out, and it was not abundantly clear that they were within the provisions of Section 77.

Mr. Ross: My point is that it is now provided that the Secretary of State will make regulations to prescribe the courses of education and training whereas previously he merely regulated to empower

committees to go ahead. Is there any change of specialised action by the Secretary of State?

The Lord Advocate: I should prefer not to say here and now that there is no material difference. I would ask the hon. Member to raise the point in Committee. It is probably a narrow point and one of some difficulty in construction. I would not say "yea" or "nay" on that point at this moment.
With regard to Clause 10, there has been reference to the desirability of having regulations rather than a scheme. Clause 11 deals with accounts and audits, and I have already referred to the appeal machinery under Clause 12. We then have Clauses 13 and 14, and the Schedules were only once, and then quite generally, referred to. I hope I have now dealt with the Bill in general and answered—

Mr. Ross: The Lord Advocate has just skated over the First Schedule. I asked a question relating to Section 88. I do not think this can be treated as a minor or consequential amendment. I should like an explanation of what it does, why it is there and who asked for it. It appears to me to mean that a local authority can now pay the full expenses of the removal and temporary accommodation of a teacher who goes from one area to another. I should not call that a minor amendment.

The Lord Advocate: The purpose of the amendment is to enable the Secretary of State, by regulation, to sanction the payment by local authorities of travelling expenses of teachers and of allowances towards the cost of removal and temporary accommodation where a teacher resident in the area of one local authority is appointed to the service of another authority.
The effect of the amendment is to make Section 88 read in the following manner. We take out subsection (1).

Mr. Ross: We take out the second sentence?

The Lord Advocate: Yes. We insert a new subsection (2) :
Without prejudice to the generality of the last foregoing subsection the expenses which may be authorised under the said subsection may include"—


We have paragraph (a) already. Paragraph (b), which is new, reads:
travelling and other expenses necessarily incurred by a teacher or other officer of the education authority with the approval of that authority in the performance of, or for the purpose of, his functions as a teacher or officer, as the case may be. …
Then there is a further paragraph (c).
The reasons for the amendment are that Section 44 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1946, already empowers education authorities to provide them with "travelling, board and lodging of teachers" in certain circumstances, where, for example, the pupil's home is remote. This power is not regarded as sufficiently wide to pay travelling expenses in all the circumstances where such expenses should be paid, where the teacher is employed, for example, as an organiser or itinerant teacher in a populous area. It was because there were circumstances in which it was doubtful whether such expenses could be paid that this was introduced. It takes a good many lines to say so, but it does do it.

Mr. Ross: That is a good explanation of paragraph (b), but it does not explain (c).

The Lord Advocate: That is concerned with the expenses of removal and of the temporary accommodation of any such teacher or officer ordinarily resident in the area of another education authority who has been appointed to the service of the authority concerned. That would meet the case of one of the teachers whom it was thought were not at present adequately covered owing to the fact that in normal circumstances they were teachers of a rather specialised type.
I hope that directly or indirectly I have dealt with most of the questions which have been put. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock asked what a person was. The Interpretation Act, 1889, says :
In this Act and in every Act passed after the commencement of this Act the expression 'person' shall, unless the contrary intention appears, include any body of persons corporate or unincorporate.
I hope that the hon. Member will go home happily with that one, and I invite the House to give this very useful Bill a Second Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

Committee Tomorrow.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) [MONEY]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).—[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the Education (Scotland) Act, 1946, and certain other enactments relating to education in Scotland and for purposes connected therewith, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1954, as amended by the Valuation and Rating (Scotland) Act, 1956.—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

Resolution to be reported Tomorrow.

ALIENS (ENTRY VISAS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

9.18 p.m.

Mr. Denzil Freeth: It is, possibly, unfortunate that Scottish Members have taken a shorter time to debate the Education (Scotland) Bill than I had hoped and certainly than my constituent, whose case I am bringing to the notice of the House, had hoped, because my constituents are probably not in the Galleries of the House.
The case which I wish to raise tonight deals with the mother and sister of my constituent, Mr. Schmidt, of Abbotts Ann, in Hampshire. Mr. Schmidt was a prisoner of war in this country. At the end of the war he settled here and married an English woman. He himself, together with his mother and father and family, although born in the Ukraine, had German parentage. At the end of the war his mother and father and his unmarried sister disappeared and he could not get into touch with them. Indeed, it was not until December of last year that Mr. Schmidt heard that his father had died in Russia and that his mother and sister were alive and had been deported to Siberia. I say "deported to Siberia" because I think that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will agree that no one goes to Siberia for pleasure.
Mr. Schmidt is now an engineer living in this country and earning good wages and his wife is also working. They own their own house in Abbotts Ann. When they knew that Mr. Schmidt's mother and unmarried sister were still alive they decided, naturally, that nothing could be more right than that they should try to get Frau Schmidt and her daughter to this country for care ; and not only for care by Mr. Schmidt, but that they should be got out of the clutches of the Communists in Russia.
Mr. Schmidt has been in touch with an organisation in Germany which exists to try to help people get back people deported from Germany to Russia at the end of the last war into the care of their relatives in free Europe. The first step for Mr. Schmidt was to try to obtain an

entry visa to this country for his mother and sister. This visa application was refused by the Home Office on 21st June of this year. It was then that Mr. Schmidt and his wife came to see me. I wrote to the Home Office, detailing the case as I saw it, and the reasons why it seems to me right and proper that the Home Office should grant an entry visa to this country for Frau Schmidt and her daughter.
I ask the House to realise that even were my hon. Friend to agree to grant a visa, it would be by no means certain that Frau Schmidt and her daughter would be allowed to leave Siberia. But, as an essential prerequisite to taking any further step to try to obtain their release from Siberia—a place from which surely we would all do our best to get anybody released—it was essential that there should be an entry visa granted for these two women to enter this country.
My hon. Friend replied on 13th July, and I quote from his letter :
We have to be fairly strict at the present time in the rules which we apply to the grant of visas for permanent settlement because there are so many people who, in the conditions existing in certain European countries, would be only too anxious to come here. On compassionate grounds, while visas are being given to enable a mother to come to live with her son, visas are granted only if the mother has been left isolated without other children in the country in which she is living, and is suffering real hardship in consequence. Sisters are not normally admitted save in very exceptional circumstances.
I felt that that was a little callous, to say the least of it, and I am afraid that I was not very cheered by the last sentence of the last paragraph of my hon. Friend's reply :
The most I am able to say is that if the official body in Germany"—
my hon. Friend was referring to the body with which Mr. Schmidt has been in contact—
is able to secure the repatriation of Mr. Schmidt's mother and she is in distress in Germany we shall be prepared to consider whether, in that situation, she can be allowed to come to live with him in the United Kingdom.
I do not think that I have read anything for a long time which is quite so stonyhearted as that.
Mrs. Schmidt, the daughter-in-law of the woman in Siberia, wrote to me. Does not my hon. Friend realise that neither Mr. Schmidt, nor Mrs. Schmidt, nor


I, nor he, can no more get a plain statement that Frau Schmidt is in distress, or that anybody living in Siberia is in distress than we can walk in today and get them out? Every letter written by anybody in Siberia today, particularly by a German national who has been deported to Siberia, is read by the authorities. These people have to be very careful what they write. How can they possibly write that they are in distress and in need of a British visa?
The daughter with whom Frau Schmidt is living earns 220 roubles a month. To try to turn Russian money into equivalent British buying power is not easy. The official exchange rate is totally unrealistic. Perhaps it is indicative of the living conditions to say that sugar is 11 roubles a kilo. That means that the wage of Frau Schmidt's daughter, to keep Frau Schmidt as well as herself, is equivalent to earning £5 per week in this country and paying 5s. a 1b. for sugar alone.
This lady has to work for a month and a half to earn enough money to purchase a good pair of shoes. buying nothing else. I do not think that many women would work longer than a week in this country to buy a good pair of shoes, if they bought nothing else. Is this not indicative of the distressed conditions in which Frau Schmidt and her daughter are at present living?
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has a phrase in his letter to me of 31st August to which my constituent took great exception. He stated that the British Government—I quote—
could not possibly accept an obligation to allow all those who want to come here to do so because, for one reason or another, they find conditions in their own country unpalatable.
I do not think that we can fairly say that when a person has been deported from his home in Eastern Germany into Siberia, in Russia, it is a case of finding one's own country unpalatable. Indeed, were it possible for them to go back to their own country they might find it very much more palatable than Siberia. If Eastern Germany followed the example of Poland they would probably find the country very much more palatable. This is not a case of dealing with somebody who happens to have a "grouse" against the Government of a country in which he lived.
When my hon. Friend said, on 31st August, that he could not possibly accept the obligation to allow to come here those who, for one reason or another, found conditions in their own country unpalatable, he went on to say :
or they do not like the complexion of the Government under which they are living.
Surely the Home Office can realise the difference between living in this country under a Government of the complexion of which one is not particularly fond, and living in a Communist State while not being a Communist. Moreover, in the case of Frau Schmidt, it is not only a matter of not being a Communist but of not being a Russian and of having to live in a Communist State which happens to be Russian and to which she was by force deported. Mrs. Schmidt points out that Frau Schmidt and her daughter are not living in their own country, but were forcibly moved at the end of the war to Siberia, where Herr Schmidt died. It is fair to say that nobody would ever wish to live in Siberia.
I should like to go beyond the very narrow point of my constituent's case, because my constituent is not alone in this matter. There must be in this country a very large number of people who are of German, Polish, Roumanian, Hungarian, or Yugoslavian extraction who wish to get over here relatives who are now under Communist domination. The real point would appear to be on what grounds is the Home Office prepared to grant visas to people suffering under Communist oppression, particularly those who have been removed by Communists from their old homes and old countries and who have relatives here in Britain who can support them or whom they can help?
In the case of my constituents, both Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt are working. Fraulein Schmidt in the Ukraine is working today. She could be working in England and these three people between them could easily earn enough money to support Mr. Schmidt's ageing mother for the rest of her life. The point seems to come down to the extract from the House of Commons OFFICIAL REPORT of 13th November, 1945, which my hon. Friend was kind enough to send me, giving the details of the distressed relative scheme as outlined by the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who was then Home Secretary.
This was a scheme brought out within a month or two of the ending of the war whereby immigration on compassionate grounds to this country was confined to those who were elderly, living in distressed circumstances abroad and having a close relative here to look after them, but we have come a long way since November, 1945. The war has been over a long time. We have managed to resettle those members of the armed forces of the Governments of countries which are now under Communist domination and who, naturally, did not want to return to them.
I also put to my hon. Friend what would have happened if Frau Schmidt and Fraulein Schmidt had escaped from Communist oppression and suddenly arrived on the coast of this country. Would they not have been allowed in? My hon. Friend wrote back to me :
I can only say that foreigners who enter the country illegally are usually sent back to where they have come from, unless they can satisfy us that they would suffer persecution ;".
Does anybody, even in the Home Office, really imagine that if a person escapes from a Communist country and is then sent back to it he would not suffer persecution? The distressed relative scheme was a bold, an imaginative and a praiseworthy scheme in the conditions of 1945. It was specifically geared to the conditions of 1945. The right hon. Member for South Shields said :
The difficulties are obvious which would be caused by large-scale additions to our foreign population at the present time when there is a shortage of housing and of supplies of many kinds, and when we are struggling to repair the losses and dislocations of a five-year war to which we have sacrificed our resources without stint ;".—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 13th November, 1945 ; Vol. 415, c. 1924–5.]
We are now ten years after the end of that war. Is it not time possibly to enlarge the distressed relatives scheme? It was, after all, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields who went on, on that 13th day of November, 1945, with these words :
…it will, I think, be the general desire of the British people that, despite these difficulties and within the limits imposed by them, the utmost should be done to maintain this country's historic tradition of affording asylum to the distressed."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November, 1945 ; Vol. 415, c. 1925.]
We have a long tradition in affording asylum to the distressed. Whether it was to Voltaire or Karl Marx, whether it was

to the many refugees from the French Revolution—some enriched our national life, some did not—this country was, even up to the outbreak of the last war, providing asylum for political refugees, for those who were in distressed circumstances, and particularly for those who had in this country relatives who were able and willing to work in their support.
I hope that my hon. Friend tongiht will be a little more, may I say, imaginative, a little less stony-hearted when dealing with this kind of application, and that he will once again look at the possibilities of granting to Frau and Fraulein Schmidt a visa of entry to this country if, within a reasonable period of time, they may be able to secure permission from the Russian authorities to leave Siberia to which they were deported, the life which they are now enduring in distress, and to rejoin their relations in this country who would so much wish to have them back.

9.36 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. W. F. Deedes): I share the satisfaction of my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Freeth) that we have a little longer than usual for debate. It is not easy to present a fair and complete picture quickly. I take no exception to what he said. This is a case which obviously attracts great sympathy, and the fact that, in the course of outlining it, he found it necessary to call me callous and stonyhearted, I accept as part of the good cause. I am sure his constituent will be very grateful for the very forceful and moving way in which he has presented the case.
It is not really possible to judge a case of this kind, the particulars of which I will go over in a moment, entirely without considering the background against which we have to operate. It may well be that when I have finished my hon. Friend will disagree with the background I present. I can only say that the particulars which he has offered of this case appear in a slightly different light when they are examined against the background on which we have to work.
Mr. Schmidt was, as my hon. Friend said, an ex-prisoner of war who was allowed to stay in the United Kingdom after the war. His wife is British. He


asked earlier this year if his family, with whom he had lost touch since he saw them in Germany in 1944, could come here if he guaranteed accommodation for them. He is financially in a position to do that ; that is not in dispute. He learned just before writing to us that his family are in Siberia. Although they are described as of German nationality, I think that in fact they derive from Odessa. The mother is now 66, and his sister, who is living with the mother and who would like to leave with the mother, is 38. These are the facts which we got from Mr. Schmidt, and we have not been able to verify them, but I have no reason to think that they are not accurate.
He first realised that his relatives were in Siberia when he heard from his mother, through a contact in Germany, who wrote to him earlier this year and told him of the father's death in Siberia. His mother and two sisters in Siberia, one living with the mother and one, I think, a married sister, are understood to be the only two near relatives. I believe that the sister living with the mother works in a children's nursery and supports the mother who is unable to work herself. I should add—I think my hon. Friend did not—in fairness, that Mr. Schmidt says that his sister was wounded during the war and is not in very good health. I think that these are roughly the facts. We were asked to consider allowing the mother and the sister to enter this country, Mr. Schmidt having guaranteed to look after them.
Before I go on with this case, perhaps I might say just a general word about the background against which it has to be considered. As my hon. Friend knows, immigration into this country has to be restricted. That is a policy which, I think, is generally accepted, albeit sometimes critically when particular cases and categories are being considered. To make such restrictions fair, there have to be certain rules on which, broadly, we base decisions. Such rules ought not to be so rigid as to cause unnecessary hardship; neither ought they to be so flexible, to the point of whimsicality, as to create, as they could, injustice in that way.
What we try to do is to admit those who have the best claim. Among the categories of persons allowed to come and settle here are certain distressed relatives of foreigners who are resident here and

able and willing to look after them. As it is into that category that this case comes, perhaps I might say a word about the distressed relatives scheme.
This scheme originated in 1945, and we have reviewed it from time to time since its inception. New categories have not been added, because it has proved quite impossible to put categories or circumstances outside the original scheme into definable groups, but we have certainly not become less liberal in our treatment of cases where exceptional factors make concessions possible. I should like to stress that. Rather, indeed, it is the other way round. In the eleven years since the scheme originated, we have admitted 6,500—including 250 widowed mothers. Outside the scheme we have admitted another 2,500. That makes a total of 9,000, and there is still a steady influx. I think that that indicates that we are not entirely selfish in granting asylum to those who seek relief here from distress.
I would add, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend accepts it, that this is only part of this nation's contribution; but one has to consider it as a part of our general contribution to the relief of refugees, which bears comparison with the contribution made by any other country. To the pre-war total of 60,000 victims of Nazi oppression admitted there have been added 200,000 refugees since 1945. Of those 100,000 were Poles who settled here, and 80,000 of the remainder entered under a series of schemes, usually known as the European Voluntary Workers Scheme. Now none are being brought in under that scheme.
But foreigners can come here to work provided they hold permits issued by the Ministry of Labour and National Service, and during the past five years 35,000 permits have been issued annually to persons in that category. It does happen quite often that someone who has settled here under one of these schemes desires that a member or members of his family should join him. That is a very natural consequence of settlement by an individual in this country, but it is not an instinct or a wish to which we could possibly give free rein. With the best will, we cannot grant such requests freely. Indeed, they can be granted only within the conditions specified in the distressed relatives scheme which, in the light of the experience of


the last eleven years has, on the whole, proved fair not only to those who wish to enter but fair to the interests of this country as well.
One such category in the distressed relatives scheme relates to the mother or grandmother of a person in the United Kingdom, if she is widowed and in need of filial care. My hon. Friend may well feel that the lady in this case falls exactly in that category. A widow, though, I must add, living with another member of the family who can, as in this case, provide, does not normally—does not in other than very exceptional circumstances—qualify for entry. I do not think that is harsh, and I would stress to my hon. Friend that a very small alteration in the conditions can make a very large difference in the numbers who will be affected.

Mr. Freeth: I did not myself plead that Frau Schmidt came under category 4, but my hon. Friend himself said that Fraulein Schmidt was not in good health and was working in a children's nursery. Would my hon. Friend be willing to say that should Fraulein Schmidt's health become worse and should she be unable to support Frau Schmidt, he would be willing to look again at this problem and consider favourably the application of Frau Schmidt under category 4?

Mr. Deedes: Most certainly. I can immediately give that assurance. I am not trying to make a narrow difference based on the condition of the health of the daughter. I am trying to give the categories under which we work. I say at once that if my hon. Friend should produce new evidence this case would be reviewed.
There are two questions asked in all these compassionate cases, and it is very often the answers to them which decide the case. First, has the relative been left alone without other members of the family to whom he or she can look? Second, is he or she suffering hardship and in need of care which a relative in this country can offer? I think those are fair questions, and in this case they have not been unfairly answered.
Mrs. Schmidt is living with her daughter. She has another married daughter in the same part of the world.

She is not, in one word, isolated—which is a primary consideration when we consider, as we have to do, such applications under the distressed relatives scheme. In weighing hardship we consider not relative conditions in the United Kingdom but general standards in the country abroad. My hon. Friend referred to costs and prices in Siberia, and I have no reason to dispute what he said, but clearly the comparison must not be with relative conditions in the United Kingdom, which to many people in the world appear very enviable indeed and which they are only too ready to share.
As I have indicated, there may be other factors. We are not rigid about this. If our inquiries reveal exceptional hardship a visa is sometimes granted outside the scheme. Here I must add that Siberia presents rather special difficulties. The normal procedure in these cases is for us to ask the visa officer in the country concerned to make the necessary inquiries after the relative has approached him. Of course, no inquiry has been possible in this case because the visa officer in Moscow would have obvious difficulties in getting particulars from Siberia. Moreover we have been asked, as I think my hon. Friend knows, not to pursue inquiries too far in that direction.
Therefore, we have to depend upon the information given by the relative in this country whose knowledge, so far as we know, is derived from two letters received in April this year after a gap of more than ten years. We have only the evidence of that relative, and on that I am bound to say the case falls short of the standard which has to be applied if we are not to open the door too wide.
In conclusion, I want to refer to two points which my hon. Friends made in respect of other considerations which he said ought to weigh with us in considering this case. He mentioned the fact that we might grant a visa, and if we did so these people still might not come because the Russians might not allow the necessary permit. I would set my face against any such act; I think it would be rather dishonest.
If we wanted to take an easy course, we could grant visas freely in the expectation that few people, particularly in Iron Curtain countries, would be able


to use them. We should have the credit for the generosity and we should probably not have the immigrants. But that would be to hand over immigration control to the authorities of another country. It would be unfair because it would mean applying one policy to the relatives of people in one country and quite a different policy to relatives in another country. I think it would be rather dishonest.
My hon. Friend considers that we ought to be more forthcoming to refugees from the Iron Curtain countries. There are 100,000 here now from Poland who settled in this country after the war. With the relaxation in Poland during the last six months, the applications for visas have thrown a heavy burden on the visa machinery and on the Home Office. If we abandoned the limits of our present policy, there would be, not hundreds, but thousands of potential immigrants to the United Kingdom from Iron Curtain countries, particularly at this moment, when

none of us knows quite what portends in the Iron curtain countries. In effect, our immigration policy would then become almost at the mercy of the Iron Curtain countries. I do not think that we should abandon the limits which we have set ourselves, bearing in mind the long-term interests of this country. Of course, visits and cultural exchanges are an entirely different matter and dealt with on an entirely different footing.
I am sorry that save for the assurance which I gave my hon. Friend, I do not feel that we can change our mind on this case, but I hope that some of the things I have said about the background against which we have had to consider it will cause him to think less hardly of us.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes to Ten o'clock.